Lister's Quandary
by Thornvale
Summary: Lister feels more down and confused than he's ever felt in his life. Humouring Kryten's endeavour to find a mysterious craft known as a Knowledge Station, he hopes that it might hold all of the answers. Rimmer, meanwhile, is incapable of coping with just about anything.
1. Chapter 1

Lister awoke to a familiar brown fuzz and a pair of enquiring eyes.

He realised, in that moment, it had apparently been Rimmer who had just jabbed him awake with a hard poke between his ribs. It wasn't the first time he had his precious sleep time interrupted so rudely. Though he knew there was little use in attempting to ignore the man, he still rolled over and grunted what might have been a verbal indicator for Rimmer to bugger off.

He curled beneath his sheets. It was good and warm. The electric blanket's temperature was spot on, and he made a mental note to praise the JMC Mainframe later, even if it wouldn't be able to appreciate it like Holly would have.

He almost drifted off, quite content, but before he could, the sheets were suddenly ripped from his foetal form. With a whine, the poor technician brought himself into a ball as the cool air of the sleeping quarters struck his flesh. Well, now there was no doubt about it. He'd have to sit up, look at Rimmer and actually communicate with the smegger, which was, in all honestly, the last thing he wanted when trying to get a good night's sleep.

"It's the middle of the bleedin' night!" he rasped, his throat dry from lack of lager. He reached for the can that was half crushed in the corner of his bunk and drained the remnants of the stale, frothy fluid within. He knew that when he turned he was going to receive a look of total disgust from his roommate, but he had long since learnt to enjoy such moments. One of the rare times Rimmer wasn't complaining was when he was focusing all of his energy into flaring his nostrils magnificently.

"It's ten o'clock in the morning, you rancid pile of unwanted dregs," Rimmer shot back, still peering at Lister over the edge of his bed. Frankly, the proximity was somewhat disconcerting.

"The hell do you want?"

"To talk."

"About _wha'_?" Lister rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and forced himself to clamber down from his bunk. Stuffing his hands into his armpits, he gazed up at the hologram and attempted to focus on him, but it made his eyeballs ache. It was the same kind of pain that looking at a screen with tired eyes induced, and he supposed looking at a hologram was the same kind of thing. Any excuse not to look at the smug git.

Rimmer's lips pursed and he straightened his uniform smock.

"About the fundamentals of … being an agreeable individual."

Lister laughed out the cigarette that he had just clumsily placed between his lips. Enjoying the other man's expression of affront, he patted his chest with mock affection.

"Rimsy, if there's anythin' you are not, it's an agreeable individual. Are you feelin' okay?"

The hologram pulled a face and moved away to sit at the table, picking up a book that was already there and waiting. He found the marked page and resumed reading the self-help book, which was one of many. The following ten books from that particular series, named _Your Super-ego and You,_ were neatly stacked and arranged in rainbow-colour order under his bunk.

That was probably Lister's cue to get back into bed and sleep away the day again. Instead, and perhaps against his better judgement, he became interested to see just how far the guy was willing to go with this sudden decision to better himself.

"Well, what d'you want for brekkie, then?" he asked, shambling over to the dispensing unit whilst trying to rub the chill from his hands. "Bit o' toast? Y'know, I think the scutters loaded the dispensers with bread that actually isn't stale. It tastes heavenly with a bit of raspberry jam. You want some?"

Though he could only see the back of Rimmer's head, he just knew that an eyebrow would be arched as the hologram pretended to appear submerged in his nonsense non-fiction.

"I can't quite recall the last time you offered me breakfast, Lister. I can't remember the last time you were awake for breakfast, actually." The book lowered, and then Rimmer turned to face his roommate, smirking like he had just cleverly deciphered some sort of code. "I see. You're trying to be nice."

"Exactly," Lister responded good-naturedly, prodding some buttons on the dispensing unit. He received in return a slightly burnt vindaloo and a fresh can of lager.

"Well, it isn't nice if you're just pretending, is it?"

" _Exactly_. You're only ever nice if you're pretendin' 'cause you want somethin' or other. Y'know, it ain't just to get stuff out of people. It's just decent. Respectful. I don't think you'll grasp that part, Arn, to be honest."

Joining his roommate at the table, he opened his can of lager and covered the hole with his thumb. Then, he used the small gap between flesh and metal to sprinkle his vindaloo with lager like a finer-cut man might have cast dressing over a salad. Fully aware that he likely appeared completely repugnant, he happily delved into his breakfast, splattering his vest with sauce and rice bits without a care in the world.

"I know respect, you goit," Rimmer said in a slightly strained tone, his eyes fixed on Lister's abhorrent chewing.

"Nah. I don't mean respect like you idolise Napoleon or whatever. I mean just general _respect._ Y'know, like praisin' someone for somethin'. Respectin' their opinions. Just holding 'em in high regard 'cause you care about them. Know what I mean?"

The hologram made to reply, then stopped. His cheeks expanded as he began to make physical effort to restrain his words. His fingers gripped the table, his temple throbbed, and so Lister began to mentally time the seconds until a flurry of insults headed his way – not because of the subject of conversation, of course, but because of the Scouser's eating habits, which he had exaggerated just slightly to grate on the other man's nerves.

"Hold it in, Arn," he warned. "We're bein' agreeable individuals, remember?"

He landed on five seconds, which was, to be fair, probably some sort of record.

"I can't! You're a disgusting blight on humanity with all the elegance of a bloated bull terrier!" Rimmer blurted. Composing himself, he furiously picked up his book and shoved his nose back into it, his ears turning an angry pink.

Lister found himself smirking. Winding up the man was one of his favourite past-times, and he often got the feeling that it was quite mutual.

"And what do we say to someone after we insult them?" he asked, dipping his papadum into his mound of malty vindaloo.

Rimmer glared at him over the top of his book. " _Sor_ -ry." The word was spoken as if laced with pain. At least he was trying.

Though he wasn't entirely sure where the odd behaviour was coming from, Lister found it interesting, to say the least. If the tetchy hologram was beginning to think of ways he could be a good person, he wasn't about to stop him. It was almost endearing, actually. Like watching a kid sharing his toys because he had just learnt about the importance of being he doubted anything would actually come of Rimmer's quest, Lister was amused enough to urge him onwards.

"You're forgiven, Rimsy."

* * *

He swiftly regretted humouring him.

Rimmer was adamant enough in his attempts to be nice that it proved more damaging than anything. He was so determined and yet so clueless that his niceties were overly forceful. When he offered to help Kryten with his chores, he ended up driving the mechanoid away with his sheer desire for everything to look perfect. When he offered to pilot Starbug so that Cat could go for a mid-afternoon nap, they had somehow ended up crashing on an asteroid despite the small, lonely rock being the only thing within miles they could have possibly crashed on.

He even began knitting. He knitted scarves, hats, the lot. It was around that time that Lister began considering that Rimmer wasn't being nice because he wanted to be, but because something was probably wrong. Rimmer wasn't nice, he wasn't _good_ at being nice, so the reluctant technician was eventually forced to heed Kryten and Cat's pushing to make the hologram stop whatever it was he was doing.

With his hands shoved in his pockets, he sullenly headed to the laundry rooms. After all those times he had demanded that Rimmer try to be a good person, he could hardly believe he was about to tell him to stop trying and carry on being a complete smeghead.

He missed it, bizarrely. The arguing and petty remarks. Most of all, he missed communicating with someone who challenged him on a daily basis, even if it was over the way he ate or the way he flicked his nail clippings in every direction. Something about snapping at his roommate just always made him feel better, no matter what.

As expected, Rimmer was stringing up clothes on the laundry line – using tongs, of course, because some of Lister's long-johns were there, too, stark white and clean but apparently still necessitating hazard equipment.

"Good evening, Lister," the hologram said pleasantly, spraying the long-johns several times over from a bottle that was marked 'industrial decontaminant'. "How has your day been, then, miladdo?"

Caught off guard, the Scouser hovered by the door for a moment, chewing on the end of one of his dreadlocks. The entire affair was actually making him a bit nervous.

"Um, I dunno. Same old, I guess."

"Ah. Marvellous."

"Well, not really."

Rimmer regarded him for a moment. He seemed to have forgotten that he still had a couple of pegs in his mouth.

"I mean, y'know, every day's just a bit samey really, ain't it?" Lister continued, entering the room to hoist himself on top of one of the washing machines. "And things have just been a bit more borin' recently. Don't yeh think? I mean, we just wake up, and then … what? What do we _do_ , Rimmer?"

He could hear it plainly in his head. A response dry enough to rival the Sahara Desert. Something like, _you've never done anything in your life, Lister. Why are you so bothered about it now?_

But it didn't come, and he hated it. With a sound of frustration, he slouched over and rested his elbows on his knees, watching the other man as he thoughtfully folded a pair of Cat's purple cords.

"Mate, just throw somethin' at me. Come on. Anythin'!"

"Sorry?" Arnold said cluelessly, his hazel eyes wide with bewilderment.

The expression was, oddly enough, quite winsome, and Lister choked on whatever he was about to say next.

"Throw something at you?" the hologram pressed. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"I don't mean _throw_ somethin' at me, I mean say somethin' nasty! Just let it out, Rimmer, you know what happens when you keep it all tucked up in there. Yeh start getting viruses and whatnot and then yeh start crashing. You must be dyin' to have a crack!"

Rimmer resumed folding. His lips twitched, evidently being denied the chance to purse themselves. Oh, Lister could see it, all right. He could just _feel_ the cutting remark sitting there on the end of the man's tongue. He could see in Rimmer's eyes just how much he wanted to have a go, just from the way they wrinkled up slightly and remained averted.

But the silence went on for too long. With a moan, Lister flopped back against the wall and closed his eyes. God, what was the point?

"Lister?"

"Wha'?" he quickly said back, his tone far more terse than he had intended.

"Look, I know when you're feeling down in the dumps. You don't get out of bed for days, only moving to gobble up some atrocity of a meal. I tried making you exercise with me. I tried making you eat something healthy, for once. I've tried being _nice_ because you're always telling me to be. Honestly, I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to be doing."

Gobsmacked, Lister slowly sat back up again, gaping at the hologram. He was reassured by the ghastly sneer Rimmer was quickly adopting, but only slightly.

"You what? You're doin' this whole nice thing 'cause of me?"

"No. I'm doing it for my health."

Sarcasm. Wonderful, delicious sarcasm. The frail facade was swiftly crumbling, but Lister was too confused to really appreciate it. Confusion then turned to slight embarrassment, so he tried to play it off by pulling his squashed box of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one, silently dwelling on his roommate's bizarre insinuation.

True enough, he had definitely been feeling down. Sometimes, it was difficult to ignore the fact he was trapped in deep space within the same ship all the time, and likely would be until he was dead. He tried to be optimistic, but even he knew his optimism was often deluded by fantasy. Nothing he dreamt would happen was ever actually going to happen. They were never going to find Earth – and even if they did, would it even be habitable over three-million years later? Would there be any humans left?

No. He really was the last smegging human alive.

So he slept and drank and smoked to drown the hollow pangs of loneliness and despair. For the sake of the rest of the crew, he had to return several days later a functioning human being.

Rubbing his nose, he tentatively met Rimmer's gaze.

"I'm fine. I'm _fine_. You don't have to try and help me, Arn. I'm hardly your favourite person, am I? I mean, look at you! Yeh can stop with pretendin' to be somethin' you aren't. I don't need it."

Rimmer looked down at the socks he was pairing together, and then _really_ looked at them, as if he had just realised what he was doing. Judging by the expression he pulled, he had succeeded in disgusting himself.

"All right, then. You can tell Bogs-for-Brains that he can have his laundry rooms back. I'm sick to death of them."

Lister found the pair of socks being lobbed into his face. He willingly accepted the unpleasant act, more than relieved that things could start going back to normal. Tossing the socks onto the side, he slid off the washing machine and realised that the hologram was still watching him, his head tilted almost expectantly and his arms folded.

"Wha'?" he asked reluctantly.

"You _do_ realise it's past midnight, don't you?"

"Yeah, and?"

"My god, you really are woebegone, aren't you? I have long since accepted you conveniently forget my birthday every year, but your own?"

It was only at that point Lister realised he didn't even know what the date was. When was the last time he had bothered to check? More disturbed by the way the other man was looking at him, he quickly shrugged to try and give the impression that he had known all along and he hadn't wanted to make a big deal out of it. Besides, birthdays weren't entirely a cause for celebration anymore.

He almost felt ashamed of himself. Every other year had involved copious amounts of booze and banging headaches the next day. This time, he just couldn't be bothered.

"You forgot, didn't you?" Rimmer pressed, smirking. "I think you need a drink."

"I think you need to smeg off. I don't _care_ , Rimmer. What're we gonna do, throw another sorry excuse for a party and get off our faces on the Captain's rum like last time? All I want is for you to naff in this stupid nice guy act. I'm gonna go to bed and I don't wanna be surprised by you guys pretendin' to be a mariachi band again."

The hologram dropped his arms in surprise. "We learnt _It's Now or Never_ for that, Lister. You couldn't get enough of it!"

It was true. Last year had been a blast. He hadn't entirely expected it to end with a drunk hologram demonstrating a surprisingly capable Elvis impression. Despite himself, he smiled slightly and dropped the remnants of his cigarette to extinguish it.

"I wanted to bash that guitarrón over your head," he muttered, though not without a small degree of sentiment in his tone. "Look, I've told yeh to stop bein' a git, so now I'm gonna go to bed. Don't bug me for a few hours, aight?"

"But – Lister -"

He left before he could hear whatever his bunkmate was going to say next. Rimmer thankfully had the sense not to go after him, whether to criticise him or otherwise. Truth be told, he'd had enough of the conversation. He'd had enough of a lot of things. Maybe the guy was right, maybe he _was_ in a bad way, but weren't they all? They were all stuck in the same situation. Now that things were somewhat in perspective, he couldn't believe that for a few days, their biggest problem was that Arnold Rimmer had been obstructively _nice_.

He knew he'd feel compelled to force out some sort of apology later. The guy had tried to do some good, only to be shut down for it. There was goodness in handling somebody else's ancient underpants with tongs, even if it displayed a magnificent misunderstanding of what real kindness was.

Lister retreated to the sleeping quarters. He undressed, save for his shorts, and then clambered up into bed.

He wasn't sure why, but he had come to hate silence. Silence reminded him of Space. The biggest trap in existence.

So he turned on the small radio on one of the shelves nearby. The JMC Mainframe sported its own station, influenced by the preferences of its crew and interrupted occasionally by annoying ads. Lister settled down to the cleansing tune of _Three Little Birds_ and hugged his pillow to his chest. Bob Marley's positive vibes reached three-million years into deep space, and for a time, Lister thought of home. He thought of his district in Liverpool with its crud-stained streets and stinky canals. Hell, he even thought of Mimas, where he had ended up stranded after a humongous bender. All of that had led to Red Dwarf, his crimson cage.

Would he have gone back to change anything if he could? No. He wasn't a fan of fiddling with the past, and besides, changing it only ever did more damage than good. He wouldn't have met Cat or Kryten, and they were his mates.

He wouldn't have met Rimmer, who was … something else. He wasn't quite sure what, yet. Rimmer often called him an associate, so maybe that's what they were.

Thinking of those three unsettled him again. He was worried about something, anxious about things he wasn't usually anxious about. It wasn't _like_ him, was it? He was usually so good at looking at the bright side of things and keeping a positive outlook. What had changed?

He didn't sleep all night. That wasn't anything new. Rolling over and going with it seemed to be the only solution. That, or drowning himself in some sort of alcohol.

So that's how he spent the day. In bed, and drinking.

Some time later, and he wasn't sure exactly what time it was, he was too busy cradling his bottle of rum to notice that Rimmer had finally come back and that the hologram was gazing at him perturbed manner. With a sigh, Rimmer stuck a movie on quietly in the background and sat down to read.

The movie slowly got louder. And louder. It got so loud that the walls started vibrating.

Lister was finally roused from his drunken haze.

"Turn it off!" he shouted, pulling his pillow over his head. "Rimmer!"

"You turn it off!" Rimmer shouted back.

God, everything about the guy was smug, even from behind. The curves of his neck. His fluffy hair. All so damned _smug_.

Furious, Lister flung his blankets off himself and clambered down from the bunk to snatch the remote off the table. After some fiddling, he managed to turn the blaring volume down again to a reasonable level.

"I'm gonna shove this so far up your rear end, you're gonna be changin' channels with your teeth!" he promised, flinging the remote at the other man. Wobbling unsteadily, he grabbed the closest chair and pulled himself into it with some difficulty. "Well, go on then, tell me I'm a mess, yeh twonk! Tell me like I don't already know it."

"You're a mess," Rimmer agreed. "What's the matter with you? You're ten hours into your birthday and you haven't once asked me to give you the _beats_."

"Fine. Give me the birthday beats! In the skull!" Rapidly standing again, he grabbed his metal bat from the side and held it aloft. "With this!"

The other man watched him almost dreamily. "I will treasure this moment, Lister. When I want your rotting brains splattered across my bunk, I'll let you know."

His complacency was nauseating. Or was it the lack of sleep combined with three-quarters of a bottle of fine, aged rum? Lister wasn't quite sure. He wasn't quite sure about anything, all of a sudden. Holding onto his bat for dear life, he succumbed to the dizziness and found the floor greeting his head with a dull thud. Finally. _Sleep_.

Sleep he did, and for several long hours. He was awoken by a pleasant scent of white lilies, familiar with it only because he knew Rimmer insisted on having his blankets and pillow cases washed with that particular powder. The sheets were warm and the pillows plush, and Lister had never been more comfortable in his entire life. With a content sigh, he rolled over and curled into a ball, inhaling more of that nice scent and comparing it to his own bunk's lager-y odour.

The thought of the smell of lager made him want to vomit. Thankfully, a bucket had been placed strategically nearby.

Kryten must have caught wind of his predicament and swooped in to save the day, as he often did when it came to mess and hangovers. Lister didn't like that the mechanoid's programming meant he felt the need to serve the crew by mopping and cleaning their clothes, but that didn't mean he wasn't grateful for his assistance.

To one side was a glass of fizzing water. Lister sipped precariously at it, and it tasted like death, but he knew this particular concoction. He'd be feeling better in no time.

As expected, Rimmer appeared. Again. He knelt down by the side of the bed with such a repugnant, gloating expression that Lister almost heaved a second time.

"Go away," the poor Scouser managed, closing his eyes and hugging a pillow to his face. "Smug git."

"Ah. I thought you wanted me to kill you with a rounders bat. Did you change your mind? Pity."

"Have a heart, man. I just wanted to forget where I was for a bit. Y'know? I'm never gonna drink ever again."

"You always say that, Listy, but five minutes later, you reach for the next can. Well, out with it, then."

"Out with wha'?"

"Well, whatever's bothering you!" Rimmer retorted, as if it were obvious. "Kryten's found another derelict and seems absurdly excited about this one. We need you in the best frame of mind once we're in Starbug. I might be a dab hand at piloting Wildfires, but Starbugs are too … ancient and clunky for me to even consider it again."

Lister smirked into the pillow. "You're just sayin' that 'cause you crash-landed us on some psiren-ridden asteroid. Took us ten hours to dig our way outta that one, remember? The whole time, I was getting taunted by that classical actress – what was her name? Angelina Jolie."

"Ah, Angelina," Rimmer replied reminiscently. "Convincing, that one. It was only because of the cutlery she carried around with her that I knew she was going to go for your brains."

"What, and not 'cause a 21st Century actress suddenly appeared on an asteroid in deep space? Give me a break, Arn. Look, I'm not goin' to some smeggin' derelict. We'll sit this one out."

The hologram shook his head. "We? We're more than capable of going without you, me old boy. If you want to sit around here moping then be my guest. I'll bring you back a souvenir. How about a small ornament? A keyring?"

Finding himself alarmed by the idea of the crew going without him, Lister quickly sat up and narrowly avoided smacking his head on the top bunk.

"You ain't goin'!"

"Yes, we are. We need supplies. I'm your commanding officer and what I say goes, comprende? Now, I can see you're not feeling yourself so I'm more than happy to let you stay here."

The smegger was up to something. He knew the idiot better than anyone, and he knew when he was plotting. He could see right through him.

Rimmer knew exactly why Lister was feeling down, and was using it to his advantage, trying to get him up and about and doing something rather than lying around. Why, exactly, Lister had no idea, other than his supposed superior's lack of tolerance for what he might have been perceiving as laziness.

Lister felt responsible for the crew. He was terrified of the future because what the hell were they going to do once he was gone? Rimmer would be switched off by the Mainframe. Cat would succumb to old age or whatever else, too. And Kryten? He'd be on his own. He had been thinking about it an awful lot, lately, and it made him feel so miserable that he didn't know what to do with himself.

Rimmer knew it. He knew Lister couldn't bear the thought of the guys endangering themselves for supplies when he wasn't there to be responsible and keep them out of trouble.

Lister hated him for it. Reaching forwards, he held onto the hologram's shoulder.

"Arnie, please. Don't be a smeghead. I know it's askin' a lot."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Frustrated, Lister rolled onto his back and flopped an arm over his eyes. "Arnold!"

"Do you know what your problem is, Lister? You don't think about yourself anymore. You're too busy fretting over Lieutenant Laundry and Mush-for-Brains. Well, I have some news for you, chap: you're human. You can't protect them all the time. Let them make their mistakes and learn from them. You're always pushing them to expand their horizons, after all."

"What are you sayin'? That I've become the _mum_?"

"I'm saying that you need to stop worrying. You're making yourself ill."

"That's rich, comin' from you. Supreme worry-lord of the Universe."

"Different thing altogether. I worry mostly about myself."

Becoming irritated, Lister took another swig of the medicinal liquid and then swung his legs over the side of the bunk, reluctantly relinquishing its comfort. With a grunt, he grabbed a pair of his now clean socks – which also smelt like white lilies – and began tugging them onto his feet. It was time to turn the tables a bit, as far as he was concerned.

"Are you coming?" Rimmer asked hopefully.

"No. Maybe you're right. You guys should go and do this on your own. I'm gonna go catch a few movies, maybe go to the library. You can handle the mission without me, right, Arn? With you leading the way, they'll be fine."

As expected, the hologram squared his shoulders and adopted an overtly proud and indignant air.

"Of course I can handle it, you pipsqueak. I am First Officer A.J. Rimmer!" he said, standing in order to perform his garish salute. "That derelict won't know what's hit it. Nope. No sir-ee. I'll leave that blighter reeling."

"All right, then, First Officer," Lister said with mock encouragement. He made a shooing gesture with his hand. "Go and do your job. Leave me alone for a bit, ey? Oh, and tell Kryten thanks for cleanin' me up."

"Kryten?" Rimmer asked, looking confused for a moment. "Oh. Right, well, I'll go and do that. Right now. And then we're going to the derelict. You already knew that, didn't you? Forget it. Look, I'm going. Watch me!"

Lister sighed and rubbed his eyes wearily. "I'm watchin'."

Clearly anxious, Rimmer hovered there for a moment, stood perfectly at attention. After an audible swallow, he turned and marched out of the room.

* * *

Alone again, the hungover Liverpudlian tried to convince himself to be thrilled with the prospect of having the entire ship to himself for a few hours. It would be fine, he told himself as he ventured down to the cinema a little later that day. They would be fine, he thought, trying to concentrate on the horror film he had dug out of the dusty old cupboard.

 _Saw 3000_. Gory enough to put anybody off their lunch. Probably not a good idea when hungover. Probably not a good idea when stone-cold sober, actually, Lister realised as the film's hero had all his limbs hacked off by an android. It only served to remind him of the rest of the crew. What if they ran into simulants? GELFs? What if they got themselves captured and he had no way of going to get them back?

No. Against his better judgement, he had to follow Rimmer's advice. He couldn't be there for them _all_ the time. It was impossible.

Trying to forget his lonely situation and the aberration he had just witnessed on the big screen, Lister travelled to the library. He could count on one hand the amount of times he had been there in the past. He could count on one finger, could to think of it. And that once was now.

The place was dusty from lack of use. He had the awful thought that most of the dust was probably remnants of evaporated crew members. Putting that out of his mind, he reluctantly searched for something that might give him answers, because he was starting to hate feeling the way he was. He found books on psychology and emotions and sat down to skim through them. A small while later, however, he found himself growing quite invested.

The human brain was fascinating, really, wasn't it?

… _In a similar vein, in the early 21_ _st_ _Century, the emotions of love and hate were discovered to come from the same part of the brain. Both invoke impassioned responses from subjects, which leads us to the question – can the two properly exist without the other?_

On second thoughts, maybe he didn't care for psychology, after all.

Lister quickly closed the book and checked his watch. The others had been gone for at least four hours.

They were fine. They were _absolutely_ fine. That was what he told himself, again, as he returned to the sleeping quarters and tucked into some dinner. He half expected Rimmer to walk back through that door at any moment, smugness levels at their very limits, with a derogatory remark in tow. _Did you find yourself with all that soul searching, Lister? Or did you give up after twenty minutes?_

There was no Rimmer. Pushing aside a half-eaten tikka, Lister went over to the small console unit built into the wall and requested the Mainframe to give him the location of Starbug. It was times like this he sincerely missed Holly, who would have provided company and some degree of knowledge as to where the others were. Alas, it was his own fault that the AI had gone bust.

Seeing that Starbug was back in Red Dwarf's hangar, he grabbed his leather jacket and made a beeline for the drive room. It was where they would typically gather after a mission so that they could fill out the paperwork. Or, rather, it was Rimmer who filled out the paperwork while the others played with all the fancy devices they had found on board other ships.

His knees almost gave out from underneath him when he saw Cat and Kryten sat together at the main console unit.

"You're back!" he greeted enthusiastically, lunging himself into a nearby seat. Trying to reign in his apparent relief, he rubbed the back of his neck. "Are you all right?"

"We're fine, Mister Lister, sir," said Kryten, turning his attention to the human. "I thought that the derelict might have been something known as a knowledge-station. There were four of them that roamed the Universe, but they all vanished. You see, they all boasted highly intelligent computers that were able to answer any questions in science related fields. Unfortunately, these computers grew tired of heeding the demands of mankind and set off on their own. I thought we might have been able to ask it whether returning you to Earth is possible. It turned out the life sign I discovered on the psi-scan was really just a GELF stuck inside the mainframe's circuits."

Cat shot Lister a terror-stricken look, pointing at Kryten. "Y'know what this dude did? He actually pulled it out! 'Cause it asked! That thing was chasin' me like _it_ was the cat and I was the mouse! I've never felt so dirty in my entire life!"

Indeed, the feline looked like he had been dragged through a hedge backwards. Lister had the decency not to comment.

"Well, did yeh find anythin'?"

"Some decent supplies, sir. The craft served as some kind of forge. We managed to find some weapons that still worked, too. I put them with the rest of the equipment."

"Nice," Lister said, relieved that everybody was all right and that the mission had been a success. Was it a good thing that they had done so well without him, though? He wasn't quite sure how to feel about that one. "Is that how you shook off the GELF?"

Kryten nodded, his rubber lips pressed together.

Oh, god. Something was wrong. Lister leaned on the console and covered his face with his hands.

"Kryten?"

"Sir?"

"What's happened? Where's Rimmer?"

The mechanoid made a pathetic whimpering sound and began wringing his fingers.

"Kryten!"

"Oh, Mister Lister, he begged us not to tell you! He beseeched me to lie and tell you he heroically defeated the GELF at the cost of his own life, but I can't lie on behalf of that pompous, overbearing smeg- that idiotic, cumbersome smeeee- that smeeeeg-"

"Neither can I!" Cat interjected, thankfully ending the mechanoid's attempts to curse. "There was some blasty-lazer cannon thing he tried to use against that stupid, hairy GELF monster. Goalpost Head had it back to front! He shot himself down some hole and now he's lodged in the ship's engine like some kinda _pebble_. We spent forever lookin' for him, then he had the nerve to blame it all on me and Chewed Pencil Head."

Lister gaped at the other two in silent disbelief, looking between them and waiting for them to announce that it was just a joke.

"You are kiddin'?" he asked weakly. "He's still on that bleedin' thing? Why didn't he want me to know?"

Why was he asking? He already knew. Rimmer hadn't wanted him to know that the mission, though it had produced some decent supplies, was a failure.

Kryten shifted uncomfortably, his guilt trip clearly in overdrive.

"I'll be damned if I know. We couldn't get him out, so he told us to come back and pretend he saved our lives."

Confused and furious, Lister's face returned to his hands. He never should have let them go without him. More specifically, he never should have let Rimmer take charge. What the hell had he been thinking? Putting any kind of responsibility on that guy's shoulders usually resulted in some sort of nervous breakdown, wherein the hologram did something incredibly damaging and idiotic and left himself in a worse position than before.

Hadn't that halfwit told him to stop worrying so much? He was certainly making it difficult. Although, if Lister remembered correctly, he had only told him to stop worrying about Cat and Kryten.

"Well, we have to go back and figure out a way to get him outta there," he said, but only after a minute or two of trying to comprehend the amount of sheer exasperation that he felt.

" _What_?" Cat shot back, spinning dramatically in his seat to face his crewmates. "Go back to that hellhole? You weren't there, gerbil-face! Just _look_ at me."

"We can't just leave 'im!" Lister argued, doing his best to measure his tone. "The further Red Dwarf gets from that ship, the worse his signal's gonna get. His battery'll run out. If you guys aren't gonna come, I'll fly Starbug there meself."

Kicking himself away from the console, he stood and left the drive room to make his way to the hangar. To his relief, he soon heard Kryten and Cat trying to catch up with him

"Jeez. What're you two? Married?" Cat asked from the rear, his objection to the rescue mission more than evident by the manner in which he spoke, but Lister was grateful for his decision to come along regardless. He did, however, opt to ignore the feline's aggravated comment.

Starbug was loaded up and online within minutes. It was odd not having Rimmer behind him in the navigator's seat, prattling on and ordering everyone around. He wondered if it had been strange for the others having him vacant from the secondary pilot's seat.

"Cat, get her in the air. Kryten, get the hangar door open. We've gotta act fast just in case his signal's been severed."

"You say that like it's a bad thing, buddy," Cat remarked, but did as he was told.

The derelict was a mysterious entity called the _SFV Sequester_. Kryten informed them that he hadn't been able to coax the mainframe into communication, thus hadn't been able to glean any information out of it at all. Judging from the weapon design, however, it had likely been built at some point in the 40th Century, and he suspected that it had once been a top secret facility.

It was definitely a grim kind of place. Then again, so were most of the abandoned vessels they came across. Dark and lonely. Unlike others, it did have breathable air inside and had incredibly stable frameworks, which came as some relief for Lister. He was getting to old to be jumping over broken gaps, or clambering up poles and pipes.

There were numerous dead forges inside. The molten metal had long since turned rock solid, and the production signs had been at a standstill for millennia, untouched the entire time. Lister wasn't there to admire the innards of the ship, however. He made for the transportation centre that connected all of the forges and took the lift down to the engine rooms.

He began to hear a loud groaning. The lift was steadily growing warmer and warmer as the minutes passed.

"The engine is still goin'?" he said in disbelief.

"Well, yes," Kryten responded. "It works much the same way as Red Dwarf, sir. It takes hydrogen from space and is thus eternally fuelled."

"Doesn't sound healthy. Sounds like me belly after Rimmer forced me to experiment with Ionian cuisine that time."

"Probably because he's rammed down there like a disgusting kidney stone, sir. He's stopped the inner works entirely, so to speak, and getting him out is going to be excruciating."

Upon seeing the engine room, it was clear why the other two had been keen to leave as quickly as possible. The place was enormous. Dark, too, barely lit by small, red emergency lights dotted around. Lister could just make out the positively giant machinery that kept the vessel going. Smaller than the Dwarf's engine room, but still remarkable. Again, he didn't have time to appreciate the place. Following Kryten's lead, he jogged over to the ledge that was situated beside the main body of the metal structure.

Sure enough, Rimmer was wedged in between two ginormous cogs from the mid-rift down. When he saw the others approaching, he lifted his head and his eyes lit up.

Lister turned to Kryten and Cat. "You two, see if you can find the drive room. If we get this thing into reverse, it might spit him out. You got your radios?"

The mechanoid held up his radio and nodded, glancing nervously up at Rimmer, who was probably glaring at him from behind Lister's back. Once they were gone, the Scouser turned to regard his rather embarrassed looking bunkmate.

"Rimmer, what the smeg have you gotten yehself into?" Lister berated him. The poor guy was only just reachable. Grabbing hold of his forearms, he gave the hologram an experimental tug and was dismayed to feel just how stuck the man was. "Are you all right?"

"Am I all right?" the other barked back incredulously. "I fell for miles! Worse – I was an idiot. I'm a goit, Lister, that's what I am. I'm a pathetic excuse for a human being. God knows I try to do stuff right, but I can't. There are amoebas with more brain cells than I have."

"Enough of that, eh?"

Searching for something to stand on, Lister quickly came across a metal crate and pushed it over. With some effort, he hoisted himself up and wrapped his arms beneath Rimmer's shoulders to try and give him some more leverage with which to pull him. He pulled and pulled, but the smegger was well and truly wedged.

"I'm a goner, Lister," the hologram lamented defeatedly. "My battery is going to run out and my light bee's going to be squashed into radioactive porridge. I just wanted to ..."

"What?" Lister pushed, trying to keep the man's mind off his predicament. He stopped yanking on Rimmer's shoulders and rested for a minute, holding his bunkmate in a weird kind of embrace unintentionally. Rimmer didn't seem to mind that his face was now lodged somewhere close to Lister's armpit, but to be fair, he did have bigger things to be worrying about.

"I don't know. Prove myself. To someone."

"You're always tryin' to prove yourself. Look, Arn, I know I've been given yeh mixed signals, tellin' yeh to be nice one minute and nasty the next. What I want shouldn't matter, really, should it?"

"Of course it matters," Arnold griped. "My entire existence depends on you hating me. Do you have any idea how that feels?"

Bewildered, Lister shook his companion slightly. "Stop it, 'kay? You're just getting yourself all wound up."

"I just wanted things to be different for a while. Is that so wrong, Lister? But I'm such a toxic waste-of-space, such a foul-brained, fuzzy-haired rodent who always has to die horribly-"

"Oi, I said stop! I don't hate you, yeh gimp. Just stay calm while they find the drive room."

Rimmer's arms flopped pathetically. "Hating me keeps you sane. That's what Holly said, isn't it? If you didn't, the mainframe would just switch me off like the defunct, miserable wretch I am. At least be honest to me in my dying moments, will you?"

"I dunno, Rim! Maybe it's somethin' else that makes it keep you on, now!"

The engine groaned again. Steam hissed out of gaps in the metal and screws pinged out of its various components. Suddenly, one of the cogs screeched and jolted, resulting in a horrendous crunching as it attempted to push against the hologram's body, squashing him down even further.

Worse – with some poor timing, Rimmer's form switched to soft-light for a split second, presumably as his battery began to struggle. It wasn't for long enough that his bee was crushed, but when the hard-light turned back on, he had the smallest gap to force apart. The thick metal bent and cracked to make up for it.

The whole time, Rimmer was clinging tightly onto Lister and shaking miserably, his terror getting the better of him. From his moans of pain, it was evident he was suffering the abuse of the force being inflicted upon him.

Lister didn't know what to do other than silently endure the man's iron grip. Once the worst had passed and Rimmer loosened up somewhat, he awkwardly gave the guy a slight rub on the back, trying to keep the both of them from panicking.

"I can't do it, Lister!"

"Stop," he insisted, reaching to grab his bunkmate's hand. "I'm sorry, all right? I should've been here! I can't stop worryin' about you guys 'cause stuff like this always happens! Someone gets hurt or kidnapped and I can't bear it, man."

"There wasn't anything you could have done if you were here, you utter nitwit! Worse, it could've been you and you could've been squashed instantly. Do you know what would've happened then, Listy? You're … As much as I detest admitting it, you're the one that keeps this crew together. I tried to be nice … for a while, because if you crumble … the entire team crumbles, doesn't it?" The hologram's voice was starting to glitch. He was doing his utmost to keep his bee from reverting to soft-light. "Then I remembered … only one way to stop you from going loopy."

Lister felt emotion bubbling up in his chest. He had been so blind to how he affected the rest of the team, hadn't he? If wasn't looking after himself the way he should have been, it meant he wasn't looking after the team. Maybe that was what Rimmer had meant, before – not to stop thinking about the others completely, but to balance things out a bit more. It was what he should've been doing all along.

It was all right to feel sad and lonely. He was human and he felt human things. What wasn't right was leading the guys into disaster. That's what he had done, wasn't it? He had forgotten that Rimmer was human, once, and he felt human things, too. Perhaps more so than anybody he had ever met.

If there was one thing Lister was good at, it was seeing the good in the bad.

"Stop feelin' bad. I mean it," he insisted, squeezing the hologram's hand to give him some kind of comfort. "You're a worm, I admit. A right piece of work. But somewhere deep down in there is some twisted sense of good. I know 'cause I've seen it, Arn. You don't need to force yehself to be nice. There's an Ace Rimmer in there and he's a top bloke. Just carry on bein' you, stop thinkin' of yehself as existin' for my sake. You're as bad as Kryten."

He was surprised when Rimmer laughed. It was a stressed and breathy kind of noise, but a laugh nonetheless.

"Listy … I always envied you, you know."

Stunned, Lister shook his head. "Wha'?"

"It's the truth. Despite everything, you're … good, all round … easy-going. Do something for me, won't you? Don't … let that go."

He almost choked. Was that praise? From _Rimmer_? Was that how the guy had felt about him all this time?

From the murkiness of despair, Lister felt a sudden resolve. He felt more himself, more capable. If the worst person in the entire Universe felt like that about him, then surely he had to be doing something right. He had been reminded there was something about himself that he could feel _good_ about.

"Am I dreamin'? That's the nicest thing yeh've ever said," he commended, teasing the other man somewhat.

Rimmer barely managed to glare at him before the metal encasing him began creaking again, pushing and pushing on his torso. His holographic form wavered threateningly, glitching violently every few seconds.

"Gaz … Gazpa ..."

"Don't say it, Arn."

"I'm trying!"

"Think about somethin' else!"

Rimmer looked up at him hopelessly, scrabbling for the Scouser's shoulders.

"Like what, Lister? Like _what_?"

"Somethin' that makes you happy! Didn't what I just said do anythin'?"

"I'm dying, you bloody gimboid! It's a bit difficult to focus on your blabbering mouth!"

With a groan, Lister hoisted the guy up so that he could look at him dead-on. "I said I don't hate you. I don't hate me for not hating you. Think about that, smeghead, not gazpacho soup."

He wasn't expecting the accusing expression thrown his way. This close to his face, it looked all the more poisonous.

"You said you'd never -" Rimmer stopped. His body suddenly fell pliant. "Lister -"

He vanished.

In that split second, Lister could see what he hadn't been able to see before. The hologram hadn't been the only thing wedged between the cogs. There was the mangled remnants of some ghastly creature, too, slimy and hairy. The GELF, no doubt, probably having been shot down the coolant vent by the others. In the brief time it took for the machinery to crunch its way past the cadaver and resume spinning, Rimmer's light bee fell past the gap and into Lister's waiting hand.

It had been close. Too close. He resolved that nobody was being left behind on Red Dwarf unless absolutely necessary. They all brought something useful to the team, and in the drowning isolation of space, they _all_ needed each other.

Relieved and thankful for their stroke of luck, Lister fell back on the crate and held the powerless light bee to his chest.

* * *

A few days later, the two found themselves falling into their usual rituals. Lister didn't mind any more. Rituals kept him going. They gave him things to think about, things to do, and he got some entertainment out of it because one of his rituals involved winding up Arnold Rimmer.

He was lying in the hologram's bunk and biting his nails. He stared at Rimmer unblinkingly, trying not to smile when he saw the man desperately trying to focus on his book, nostrils flaring extravagantly.

"God, you must make the girls go crazy when you pull faces like that, Rimsy."

Two seconds. The book slammed down onto the table and Rimmer clasped his hands as if to keep them from wrapping themselves around Lister's throat.

"Lister, might I ask why you're gnawing on your fetid paws in _my_ bunk?"

"Yours is comfier. Smells nice."

The hologram rolled his eyes. Lister smirked and gestured at him.

"Oi, c'mere. There's somethin' I wanna say."

"Do I look like an idiot? Last time I fell for that one, you broke wind and held my face under the sheets. I vomited for days on end."

Lister snorted with laughter, sounding pathetic in his attempts to hold it in. His companion's evident disgust caused him to break, and he guffawed involuntarily, fuelled by Rimmer's complete lack of humour regarding the incident.

"Nah, for real, man!" he insisted once he was capable of speech. "C'mere! I promise I'm not up to anythin'."

Driven by curiosity, Rimmer stood and awkwardly hung about by the bunk. When Lister patted the space on the bed next to him, he looked entirely confused, which was understandable. The two of them usually kept as far away from each other as they could.

"I'm sure whatever you want to say, you can say it while I'm here," the hologram pointed out, folding his arms.

"I wanna say it while you're next to me."

There came a hefty sigh, a reluctant moan, and then Lister's larger bunkmate squashed himself onto the bed and rested there with his hands clasped on his stomach.

" _What_?"

"Well, I was just thinkin'. A lot of things about the Space Corps really blew, didn't they? Did ya ever notice how people with money and influence seemed to climb the ranks way easier than the likes of us?"

"Of course I did," Rimmer replied unsurely.

"But in the end, it doesn't mean nothin', did it? Only that the Corps missed out on a ton of talent. The exams were a load of smeg, really. What does it matter if you can write down how Emma and Reyansh figured out the trajectory of a paper ball they shot with an elastic band? Me and you figured out how to pilot ships on our own. You do all the crap a Navigation Officer does. I've shot planets into black holes. We're no better or worse than any of they were, but we were always spoken to like we were scum."

There was a brief silence. Lister raised his head and rested it on his hand, watching with some amusement as the other man shifted uncomfortably, obviously struggling with their proximity.

"The exams were important, Listy. They showed you had the brains to excel in that field."

"But not everyone was good at exams, were they? You're livin' proof – and I don't mean that nasty, like. Intelligence isn't just bein' able to remember crap, is it? It ain't just bein' able to tick A, B, or C. Sometimes I'm glad the Corps is gone. I mean, I'm not glad _humanity's_ gone, but we were so imperfect with the way we saw things. Sometimes, I wonder if our species ever achieved, like, perfection. In that three-million years."

Rimmer seemed to have relaxed a little by that point. Exactly what Lister had intended.

"Lister, if they ever achieved perfection, they wouldn't have died out."

"D'yeh think?"

"Yes. I think I'm catching your drift. It wasn't a good thing that humanity is gone, but it isn't bad, either. Besides, what does the Universe care? It evolved mankind, saw itself, got bored and turned them all back into stardust."

"Yeah," Lister murmured, sincerity replacing humour. "A lot of good and bad got erased in the blink of an eye, cosmologically speaking."

Rimmer eyed him, biting thoughtfully on his lower lip. It was a rather endearing move.

"Is this what you wanted to say?"

"Nah. I haven't quite got the balls to say what I wanna say."

"Well, it must be a hell of an insult, then."

Lister laughed again. "For you, maybe."

"Try me, Listy. I almost died a few days ago. I'm sure I can handle whatever it is you're blithering about."

The Liverpudlian rubbed his mouth and swallowed, glancing away for a moment.

"All right. I'm confused about somethin'."

Rimmer raised his head slightly. "Confused about what?"

"Not sayin'. 'Cause I know you, Arn, and I wish I could get it off me chest, but it'll just mess you up."

Suffice to say, Lister had been reading some more books, lately. He had an entire library to read to keep him busy. He was already feeling somewhat more open and thoughtful about things, but as he had said, also very confused. He still wasn't sure if his feelings were legitimate, but he was also extremely certain that there was no way of testing the waters.

He still didn't hate that he was feeling this way.

Rimmer's face creased as he thought of a reasonable retort. "I haven't seen Cat in a while. Have you decided to do away with him and store him in a freezer somewhere? I can't say I would be mortified if you admitted it."

"Jesus, Rimmer! Your mind goes down every dark corridor there is!"

"Ah, so it's not quite as bad as murder but still bad enough you can't tell me what it is?"

"It's not bad. I just don't wanna make you feel uncomfortable."

Another silence and more lip biting. If he had to drop anymore hints, the guy would just be figuring it out for himself.

"I have watched you devour your own toenail parts," Arnold began, raising his eyebrows. "I have observed you devouring an entire vindaloo in twenty seconds flat. I've seen the entire crew naked more times than I care to imagine. I've been in your drunken presence and had you vomit all the way down my trouser-legs. My sense of discomfort has been entirely numbed, miladdo."

"You're a right comedian, you are," Lister retorted. With another sigh, he reluctantly began to dislodge himself from their cosy predicament. "I guess yeh want your bunk back." To his surprise, Rimmer held out an arm and stopped him from moving.

"You can't just say all those things about exams and then insult my intelligence. Do you really think I don't know what's going on, here?" A painful pause. "You're going for the astrophysics exam, aren't you? How long have you been revising?"

Both insulted and pleased that the hologram hadn't cottoned on, Lister stared disbelievingly down at his bunkmate.

" _No_ , yeh twonk! Get off. I'm goin' up to me bunk. I'm getting real tired of the smell of flowers."

He was starting to feel awful again. Maybe this had all been part of his low moods, lately, amongst everything else. Realising that the guy wasn't going to move, Lister awkwardly clambered over him and was about to climb into his own bunk when he felt a hand gripping his sleeve. He looked down expectantly.

"Are you?" Rimmer enquired in a mysterious tone.

Well, Lister wasn't quite sure how to handle that.

"Is _that_ what would cheer you up?"

He was lost. "Wha'? I dunno, Arn. I don't need cheerin' up anymore."

"Are you sure? I'm rather good, you know, or so I've been told."

The poor technician thought he was about to go mad. With a hard swallow, he held onto the edge of his bunk and reluctantly met Rimmer's eyes.

"Good at what?" he asked quietly.

Rimmer leaned in a little. There was suggestion in his gaze. A spark Lister hadn't ever seen there before. It burned with promise, and the Scouser eagerly awaited the answer.

" _Horticulture._ "

Oh.

"I know it always makes me feel better, Listy. The warmth. The softness of flower-petals beneath your fingers. The way you can just touch and bend everything to your command. I really think you'd like it. You should come with me to the gardens tomorrow."

"Maybe," Lister croaked. "On second thoughts, I need a long, cold shower. Don't come find me."

Well, _smeg_.


	2. Now or Never

Lister hadn't planned on having any adventures for a while. He just wanted to sit back and relax for a few weeks and make the most of anything good he could wrangle out of his situation. The entire affair aboard the _Sequester_ had shaken Rimmer up quite badly, too, understandably.

There were times they didn't go looking for adventures but got them anyway. Trouble had a nasty habit of finding them, and Lister had long learnt not to expect anything specific out of a day. One moment, they could be watching Zero-G Football and eating Wotsit sandwiches. The next? They could be lost on a small ice-planet in uncharted Space.

That's exactly where he was, now. Lost, and smack-bang in the middle of a blizzard. It hardly seemed like five minutes ago that Kryten had interrupted Lister and Cat's Zero-G session with the claims he had discovered the elusive Knowledge Station he was insistent roamed this bleak area of the cosmos. Perhaps against their better judgement, the crew had loaded up Starbug, not expecting that the search would lead them to a frosty planetoid that was about as habitable as the Antarctic.

They were unfortunate enough to enter the atmosphere in the midst of a severe storm. Starbug was tossed about the air for miles, and for a time, was completely uncontrollable. Lister couldn't quite remember what had happened next. He could faintly recollect smashing into every piece of equipment going, and trying to locate his crew-mates amidst the chaos, but then nothing.

The first thing he became aware of when coming to was the extreme cold. He was almost certain that if he could feel any part of his body, he would be in extreme pain, given the fact he was sprawled awkwardly in the snow and surrounded by chunks of what he presumed to be Starbug. His thoughts quickly shifted to his team and he tried to smother the panic that began bubbling up in his chest. They were fine, his brain insisted. They had survived worse crashes, hadn't they?

The blinding white of the environment gradually ebbed as his eyes became accustomed to it. Weakly raising his head, he found that he was coated in bloodied snow and metal parts. How the hell had he ended up outside of the craft in the first place? If Starbug was in such bad shape, how were they going to get back up to Red Dwarf?

Survive first, questions later.

Lister jerked an arm to try and shift some of the heavy snow and metal that was burying him. Barely anything moved, and the attempt made him feel so nauseous that for a moment, he dropped his head down and instead focused on not giving up and passing out. The cold would only claim him if that happened, and then what would the others do?

Opening his eyes into a squint, he thought he could see a shape manifesting through the snow. Well, it was either going to be one of the crew or something that wanted to eat him, and at that point, either option was desirable.

"K-Kryten?" he croaked, trying to reach upwards, but something was weighing down his arm. With a pained gasp, he squeezed his eyes shut again and prepared himself for whatever agony was sure to come as teeth or claws or whatever else sank into his flesh.

Instead, he felt the weight on his body gradually lifting as the metal parts were slung away from his limbs. Peering up, he could begin to ascertain that the dark shape wasn't Kryten at all, but actually Rimmer, at first recognisable because of his thoroughly disgruntled countenance. He appeared unharmed, which was to be expected, but Lister still felt a warm relief upon seeing that at least one of his crew-mates was okay.

"Y-you all right?" he asked regardless, defying the numbness setting into his face.

Rimmer's features became clearer as he leaned in. There wasn't a trace of smugness or contempt to be seen, and he certainly appeared far more striking because of it. Or, no - perhaps it was just shock and deliriousness on Lister's behalf, and the fact it hurt to look at just about anything on this snow-ridden planet.

"I'm fine," the hologram answered, a worrying presence of concern in his tone. "Lister, I don't want to _worry_ you, particularly, but you're in rather bad shape. There's a volcanic cavern nearby that'll get you warm, but I'll need to carry you."

"I d-don't need to b-be carried," Lister insisted. Once again, he attempted to move by grabbing hold of his companion's arm and pulling himself upright – but the movement exhausted him completely. For a sickening moment, it felt as if his head was stuffed with cotton wool and like his blood was draining away from his brain. He had never felt so awful in his life, even when severely hungover, and there was little chance of him actually walking to wherever it was they had to go.

Despite the howling wind and freezing cold, he detected a pleasant, floral scent. He wasn't sure how holograms could even have a scent. Perhaps it was just an illusion, an emulation of how Rimmer would have smelt if he were alive, but he was certainly grateful for it and the small comfort it granted as he just about acknowledged that he was being dislodged from the snow and carried bridal-style across the barren landscape.

Better was the warmth that Rimmer's holographic form granted, unaffected by the extreme cold of the planet's atmosphere. Light bees exuded waste thermal energy, particularly when they were working off battery, which was carefully designed to imitate the body heat of humans. It was like being carried by a soft radiator. Unfortunately, the sensation of warmth also served to force Lister to realise just how cold he actually was – and how much pain he was in.

His head throbbed unpleasantly. He could feel blood and drool frozen to his face, and realised he must have bashed his head fairly hard during the crash. Worse was his leg, which flopped about uselessly over Rimmer's arm and twinged with a dull, aching pain every now and then. Even from his position, he could see that his knee was definitely not the shape it should have been and probably dislocated.

Fan-smegging-tastic. Not only was he stuck on some hellish planetoid with little hope of getting home, he was more busted up than he'd ever been and would be no help to the others whatsoever. That's if they were even still alive.

Managing to peer past Rimmer's shoulder, he saw that Starbug was vacant from where he had landed, save the metal components strewn about. He didn't have the energy to try and figure out just where it was, but he certainly still had the capacity to fret over absent crew members.

"We n-need to find 'em," Lister rasped desperately over the wind, grabbing his companion's upper arm and squeezing it insistently. "G-gonna die out there -"

"Lister, do yourself a favour and shut up," Rimmer advised. "They're still trying to land. Focus on not dying, instead. I don't particularly want to be lumped with your miserable corpse."

There was a portion of the landscape devoid of snow and ice, and instead boasted jagged, black stone. Indeed, there was a cavern set amongst the spiky rocks, dark but decidedly much warmer than the outside world. As he was carried down into the darkness, Lister could hear the hissing of steam seeping out from between cracks in the walls, and he wondered whether they were actually safer in a volcanic cave than they were freezing to death outside.

He forced himself not to think about any potential dangers. He hated to admit that Rimmer was right, but he knew he had to focus on himself before he could focus on anybody else if he was going to try and help them.

Hard rock bumped against his rear end as he was lowered against the cavern wall. They were deep enough that he couldn't see a thing. In an instinctive response to the darkness and the cold he still felt, he held onto Rimmer's arms to keep the warm hologram close to his body.

"I'm c-cold," he felt the need to explain, forcing the other man to kneel down and accommodate.

"Clearly. My bee's temperature is adjusting. It's warm in here. You'll be fine in a bit, you don't need me to -" Rimmer was interrupted as he was again tugged downwards and a pair of shivering arms wrapped around his middle. "Lister!"

"Wh-wha'? God, you f-feel amazin', man. Just l-let me hold on 'til I feel b-better, aight?"

He heard a sigh, but he couldn't feel Rimmer's breath against his head. Holograms didn't have breath. This one did, at least, have the same weight and convincing feel of another human being, even if something about the material of his uniform felt a bit off and like it was doused in static. Once he was sure Rimmer wasn't about to dash off to the other side of the cavern, he removed his arms from around him and instead curled his shaking hands up in the small space between them, trying to warm them before they became subject to frostbite and dropped off.

They remained like that for a minute or two, Lister slumped against the wall and Rimmer awkwardly hanging over him to share his heat. Eventually, the Scouser's mind cleared a little and he was able to properly consider their situation.

"What happened?" he asked reluctantly. "All I remember is getting tossed about the c-cockpit when the storm hit."

"Yes, it was rather like being inside a rather formidable pinball machine, wasn't it? Something was blown off the ship, and that in turn damaged one of the thrusters. The Cat managed to pilot it closer to the ground and tried to land, but something tore a hole in the port side of the cockpit. You and I were sucked out the ship like spiders into a hoover."

Aghast, Lister tried to focus on Rimmer's face through the darkness, but his eyes still weren't adjusting.

"What the hell could've ripped a hole in Starbug?"

"A rocky outcrop, maybe. Or something with big claws and an even bigger appetite."

If he didn't have such a ginormous headache, the Liverpudlian would have rolled his eyes. Trust Rimmer to try and make a bad situation even worse. Instead, he moaned slightly and tried to tuck his freezing hands into the sleeves of his big coat, but it hardly helped.

"Rimmer?"

"What?"

"Can I put me hands inside you?" he asked. He felt the hologram go rigid.

"Excuse me?"

"Like, n-near your bee. B-bet it's proper toasty in there."

It was a bit rude, he supposed, because he knew that intruding a hologram's projection field was extremely impolite and invasive, but he didn't care to think much about Rimmer's personal space in that moment. His fingers were so numb that he couldn't move them at all, and he definitely wasn't losing any limbs for the sake of his bunkmate's pride.

To his utmost surprise, he suddenly felt his hands being guided into what at first felt like empty space, until he felt like he had just shoved his arms into an oven. A hard-light's body was near impossible to penetrate, but they could put their hands inside themselves when they needed to fiddle with their bees, and it seemed as if they could consciously allow somebody else to do the same so long as hand-to-hand contact was maintained.

"Better?" Rimmer asked snidely, clearly uncomfortable with the intimate contact.

As if in answer, Lister tried to push his hands in further, seeking to grasp hold of the warm, metal device inside, but he felt Rimmer deliberately forcing his hands apart to keep them away from it. Frustrated, he tried to fight against the man's iron grip, but hard-lights were as strong as they were difficult to dispose of.

"Stop it," Arnold hissed. "Don't touch it, or I'll shove your grotty hands inside _you_."

"Arn, please! I'm bloody freezin'! D'yeh really think I'm gonna do somethin' to it? I j-just need to hold it for five minutes!" Again, Lister tried to reach for the light bee, only to find himself being forcefully expelled and pushed back against the wall so hard that all the breath was knocked out of him.

"I said _no,_ you blithering brute."

Rimmer vanished into the darkness. Lister was distracted enough by his suddenly agitated sense of guilt that he didn't expect what came next.

Pain unlike anything he had ever felt exploded in his knee and coursed up his thigh. It was enough that he unleashed an embarrassing shriek and immediately curled into a defensive ball, tears already streaming from his eyes. His gut lurched and it took all of him not to puke down himself as the pain continued to resonate.

With a pained gasp, he fell onto his side and hugged his knees up to his chest, biting on one of his fingers. His knee was as right as rain, now, and no longer uncomfortable, save for the agony of the reduction.

"Rimmer!" he squeaked past his finger. "That really bloody hurt!"

"Oh, did it? _Good."_

"You're a bleedin' smeghead! You're a weasely, good-for-nothin'-"

"And you certainly seem to be feeling better. Don't worry, Listy; you can save the thanks and the apology for later."

"Apology?" Lister snapped. "For what?! Tryin' to get warm?! Jesus, Arn!"

Even as he said it, he knew just how wrong he was. He had the sense to acknowledge that Rimmer likely felt uncomfortable with anything going near his light bee, especially with his close call on the _Sequester_. Grabbing something that was a part of somebody else without their permission wasn't exactly what Lister would call decency. In fact, it was the complete opposite, and he knew how he'd feel if somebody did the same to him.

In the uncertain silence that followed, Lister wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, now laden with both concern and with guilt. Making excuses would have just made things worse. Rimmer had actually actively tried to help him but he'd just gone and mucked everything up.

"Arnold?" he spoke into the darkness, hoping his companion was still there. There was a pause, and then he heard a sharp sniff of acknowledgement nearby. "I'm s-sorry. That was wrong."

"The cold brings out the worst in you, Lister."

He almost flinched. He knew that Rimmer was referring back to when he had burnt part of the man's precious camphor wood trunk instead of his own guitar in order to stave off the cold. He occasionally felt awfully guilty about the whole thing, but his bunkmate was an exceedingly difficult person to feel guilt over.

"I know," he admitted. "A l-lot of stuff does."

"Or maybe it's just me," came the sullen reply.

"D-don't think that. I really am sorry, all right? I'm the good-for-nothin' one for tryin' to grab it without askin'." There came another silence. Unsure what else he could say, he added, "Thanks for me knee. Where'd you learn how to do that?"

"I didn't learn how. That was luck."

The poison laced into the response alerted Lister to the fact he was no longer welcome to engage in conversation with his companion. It was a frequent occurrence, of course, whenever one of them said or did something that crossed the line. They would simply part ways for a bit and allow themselves to cool off before returning to normal. Here, however, it was going to be difficult to cooperate without engaging with each other.

Respecting Rimmer's desire, Lister turned his back and coiled up, shoving his hands into his pits and keeping his sore leg outstretched. Being cold and fearful had made him somewhat irrational because he was scared of dying, and the same thoughts had been exactly what was plaguing him as of late. The future and all that came with it.

He had been wanting to talk to them about it. He wanted to sit them down and talk seriously about the things that were coming, because he knew that none of them would face the problem head on. He wanted to ask Rimmer whether he'd consider being switched off at some point in the future so that Lister could ensure his bee would be sent to the Ace Rimmer graveyard. Similarly, he wanted to ask Kryten whether he'd want to be switched off and disassembled until potentially discovered again. And Cat? Well, if there was one crew-mate he knew could sort himself out, it was Cat.

He didn't really know what he wanted for himself. He didn't often think about it. There was one thing he wanted while he was still alive, though. Something so beyond the realms of feasibility that he simply stuffed those thoughts away, putting them down to loneliness and desperation.

Because anybody had to be out of their minds to see the ultimate smeghead as being remotely attractive in any way.

It was strange, what had happened. After the incident on the _Sequester_ , it was like somebody had flicked a switch in his brain and he began to see things in a different way. All the reading had certainly helped, but hadn't provided an answer he wanted to accept. Why didn't he hate this person any more? Didn't he _need_ to hate him any more? The only likely explanation was that he had been feeling that way for a while, but the incident had shaken him up enough that he realised that life was fragile. Even Rimmer's, in his digital undeath. Something could happen and then he'd never get a chance to actually say something, would he?

Logically, now that they were in their volcanic cave of misery, he should have said something. They could get separated. He might never see the hologram again. And Lister would regret never having the courage to tell somebody in full confidence that he had developed extremely confusing feelings for them, even if the very thought made him want to give himself a lobotomy with an egg-whisk.

And Rimmer would never know that somebody felt that way. About _him_. Somehow, that thought was more painful than anything else.

 _It's just … you don't really feel that way, Listy, do you? You've gone space-crazy. There's nothing like a beautiful woman. You know that. My father knew it. He drilled it into me until I couldn't so much as look at another man without feeling awful. When I was eight, he caught me trying to use my mother's make-up on Frank's action dolls. He locked me in a cupboard with nothing but Playboy magazines for nine hours._

He'd only casually mentioned that he thought the male newsreader was a bit of all right, for a bloke, and then discovered that Rimmer had an entire miserable history with the prospect of thinking blokes were a bit of all right.

 _I didn't really understand why he was so cross. He told my mother, so she stopped taking me to theatre. And my brothers – they were the worst. They told everybody at my school. The whole time, I had no idea what I was being punished for. My brothers said that nobody would like me if I didn't act normally. That lady newsreader – the hologram – now she's something, isn't she?_

The entire conversation had made Lister feel sick to his stomach. Not with his bunkmate, but with the ideology he had always been raised with, and his ghastly family.

It was why he couldn't say anything now, as he faced dying on a frozen planet.

It was the worst kind of pain, really. He had felt it with Kochanski. He felt it now. He wanted rum, beer, anything that would drown those feelings, but alas, he wasn't on Red Dwarf, and there was next to no chance of getting back. He wanted to get Kryten to drain his brain out of his nostrils, because it was Rimmer he was thinking about. _Rimmer_.

And he'd just tried to grab onto the guy's light bee like it was nothing. The guy didn't like contact much as it was, let alone having the one thing he had some autonomy over fondled like it was just a thing and not the device that gave him life.

"God, I'm so sorry," he muttered.

"You've said that, Lister."

"Not just about the bee thing. Other stuff, too."

He could've sworn he heard Rimmer shifting closer.

"Like what?"

"I dunno. Jus' … a lot of things. Like … you ain't happy, are yeh? But you stick around anyways, keepin' me goin', sharin' a bedroom. All I want is for you lot to be happy, man, but I can't do it. I just make things worse."

Hearing the scuff of boot against rock, Lister turned to face the direction of the noise. He still couldn't see a thing, but that was probably for the best.

"Oh, please. Stop talking before I flood the place with my tears," was the tactless response. "I can hardly fathom what I'm hearing. You truly haven't been yourself for several weeks, now, but this? I'll accept your apology if it makes you feel better, but I don't need it for anything other than your mindless groping."

 _Warmth._ Rimmer was there, again, and he was positioning himself in front of Lister. The Scouser tentatively reached forwards and took hold of his forearms.

"You're shakin'," he surmised, devastated by the realisation that struck. "I scared you, didn't I? Man, I really am -"

"If you say you're sorry one more time, I'm going to garrotte you. And for the record, it wasn't so much what you did, but everything that's happened over the past week or so. It's hardly been our finest moment, has it?"

"We don't have fine moments," Lister grumbled, squeezing Rimmer's forearms in an attempt to stay the trembling. The hologram's efforts to keep his anxiety from taking over were serving him well, so far, but it was only a matter of time. He was either going to scarper or accidentally do something detrimental in an effort to aid Lister's survival.

"Total codswallop. I shan't speak for you, but I've had a fine moment or two."

"There's nothin' fine about your moments."

"Oh, poppycock! What about that time I swung into that nest of polymorphs to pull you out of the sinking sand?" Rimmer pressed insistently.

Relieved that any contempt aimed in his direction apparently hadn't lasted long, Lister relaxed somewhat, finding a small, shaky smile arising. Their more serious arguments rarely persisted for any great amount of time, in actuality, and were usually resolved by their more harmless, petty verbal spars.

"Yeah. Swung in like George of the Jungle. Then yeh fell in headfirst. Lucky you don't have to breathe, innit? Was like when you wash a spider down a drain, legs all wigglin' around. I appreciated the effort, though, mate. Honest."

Rimmer shifted uncomfortably. "Well, it wasn't my fault the vine turned out to be a polymorph, too."

"I know, man. Ey, what about when you took off and became Ace for a while? Probably your finest moment, weren't it? All right, I was wrong. We're not all bad."

"Well … I suppose," his companion began, his voice straining with an apparent reluctance to say whatever was coming next. "I suppose there are … _things_ you have done which were … adequate."

Lister coughed with a swell of laughter. He croaked as mirth momentarily overtook him. It hurt to laugh, considering his current circumstances, but he didn't try to stop it coming, instead relinquishing frightful snorts through his nose and teeth. After a few wheezy snickers, he leaned in and playfully bumped Rimmer's shoulder with his forehead.

"You're funny, Rimsy. You gonna start washin' me socks again once you're done with the compliments?"

"Lister, I would rather smother my hands in butter and then dip them into a nest of starving bullet ants than share a room with nothing but your socks and underpants for company again. I would no sooner come into remote contact with your antiquated unmentionables than I would radioactive waste."

"Funny you say that, really. Weren't you folding me pants just a few days ago?" Lister reminded his bunkmate. Realising he was still holding onto the man's forearms, he made to let go – then just held them even more tightly. What did it matter if the guy didn't seem to mind? Besides, he was so incredibly warm to the touch that there was no question about it, really.

"I'm not sure how we've gone from you admiring me to talking about your malodorous knickers," the hologram muttered bitterly. "Well, how's the leg? Can you move?"

"Bit sore. Needs a splint or somethin'. Could probably use one of the metal parts that fell of the 'bug, but it's too dangerous goin' out there with that storm blowin' a hoolie. Let's wait for it to die down, eh?"

Giving his leg an experimental bend, he winced. A painful heat was setting into that particular area, and the amount of swelling meant it was difficult to move it, even if the bone had been set back into place. Despite that, he was certainly warmer than he had been ten minutes ago, and was no longer shivering like it was going out of fashion.

"Lister, this storm could last for years. It could even be a permanent fixture on the surface," Rimmer argued. "For how long are you proposing we wait?"

"I dunno, man. Just a few hours! I can't go back out there while it's like that, can I? I'll die. And you ain't goin', either, in case you get yehself lost."

There was an odd moment during which Rimmer leaned forwards until his head was somewhere near Lister's shoulder. They weren't quite touching, save for the hand to arm contact, but the sudden closeness took the Scouser by surprise. It took him a moment to realise that he wasn't breathing, and when he did resume, it emerged as a rather pitiful, stifled gasp.

"I won't get lost. I was leader of my school's orientation club for a reason," Rimmer continued arguing, apparently completely unaware of what he was doing, at least in regards to his crewmate's sudden inability to form a functional sentence. "Nobody has a better sense of direction than _moi_."

Poor Lister felt about eighteen years old again, and not in a good way. In the awkward and inexperienced way, actually, even if he wasn't supposed to be either of those things anymore. Any cold he had felt before had either vanished or he was simply too distracted to notice it, because once again he had acquired another lungful of a pleasant scent, one he was fairly certain he hadn't started noticing until rather recently. Rimmer was also the equivalent of a toaster at that moment, too, and he was actually making Lister start to sweat.

Because of the heat, of course, and not for any other reason whatsoever.

"The reason was that you were a total dork," he managed to utter, pressing himself as close to the wall as he could to try and cool off a bit. "Rimmer, are you …?"

"No," the hologram responded at once. There was slight squeak to his voice.

"You are. You're heatin' yehself up! You're gonna drain Starbug's energy if you keep it up!"

A brief silence confirmed what was going on. Stunned, Lister gave Rimmer's shoulder a hard shove. It hardly achieved anything, but the intent was more to display how uncomfortable he was with the realisation.

"You'll drain their systems, yeh bleedin' haemorrhoid! They could end up on the other side of the planet! I don't need your heat any more, I'm fine!"

"You just tried to yank my bee out of my body, you utter git!"

And they were back to square one.

Gobsmacked, Lister didn't know what to do other than forcefully place his hands on Rimmer's shoulders and hold him a mere inch away from his own face. Not that he could actually _see_ him and reinforce his point with the anger on his countenance, but it had to suffice. He had known that it was only a matter of time until the wretched man did something stupid, but he hadn't expected it to happen quite so quickly.

"They need the energy to land. Cool down your bee, or better yet, _switch yehself off!_ They need all the power they can get to land in the middle of a storm."

Once again, tension sparked and the two men sat in unyielding silence, probably glaring at each other, but one couldn't be sure when they were surrounded by pitch darkness. Lister immediately regretted his words, but he had swiftly become far too angry to even consider renouncing them, and so waited to hear either a anxious rebuttal or the soft _chink_ of a light bee hitting the ground. The latter option was too good to be true, of course.

"I was trying to _help_ you," Rimmer said lowly, his voice suddenly laden with a nasal upset. "I'm not just some appliance that you can switch on and off. A little gratitude wouldn't go amiss -"

"I didn't say tha'! I meant that they need your energy more than you! Yeh could've made 'em lose power completely, then they'd be dead and we'd be stuffed! You're proper mad, you know that?"

His hands were roughly pushed away. Hearing Rimmer get up and move away to an undisclosed location, Lister allowed himself to flop down to the floor and curl into a small, warm crag in the rocks, briefly covering his face with his hands. Why was everything such hard work, these days? Why were his crew mates such hard work? He forgave himself for his quick temper, because he was hardly in an ideal situation, but he wasn't sure how to feel about what he had said. Rimmer had deserved it, undoubtedly, but he still felt awful. At any other point in history, he absolutely would not have cared about hurting the guy's feelings, because his general lack of caring was entirely mutual.

Now, he wasn't too sure.

"I've switched to battery. Does that make you happier, your majesty?" came the expected response. God, but the hatred therein was positively tangible. Lister closed his eyes and tried to ignore it.

"How long've you got?"

"A few hours. If there's anything you want to say, then say it now before my bee dies and you have no way of charging it."

"I haven't got anythin' to say," he lied. Oddly enough, it hurt to say it, like a dull, tooth-ache kind of pain, only jabbing somewhere in his chest. "Was just havin' you on the other day. I don't know what you were expectin'."

"Nothing of importance, I'm sure."

* * *

And that was that, at least for an hour or so. It was much like the times they argued and then went to bed in seething silence. The next morning, they always acted like nothing had happened and continued on as normal. It was going to be rather more difficult to do that, this time, not because of the extent to which they had both angered each other, but because they couldn't go to sleep and use the time that passed as a means to cool off.

Well, Lister _could_ sleep, but he didn't want to. He feared waking up alone. He had to stay awake to stop his companion from doing anything else idiotic, like walking out into an awful storm and getting his light bee blasted twenty miles across the vast wasteland. As such, he kept his ears peeled for any sign of movement, and wondered if Rimmer was doing the same.

He was exhausted, however. His fierce determination to stay awake only made him more tired. That, along with his headache and nausea, eventually coerced him into dozing off. Just for a second, or so he allowed himself to think. Nothing was going to happen in such a small space of time, was it?

He almost achieved forgetting where he was, albeit for a short time. His coat was comfortable enough that he momentarily thought that he was in his bed on Red Dwarf, peaceful and content. His brain wasn't entirely fooled, however, and had the sense to acknowledge that anything could have happened in the short period in which he was dead to the world.

Though his eyes were closed, he could see a bright light behind them, one that briefly stunned him upon actually looking at what it was. Lister quickly sat upright and struggled to pull himself up onto his feet, his mouth agape.

It was like he was dreaming. The entire cavern was lit up in a soft, silvery light, the source of which was Rimmer, who was stood in the centre of the decent space. The hologram was looking down at himself like he had never seen his own body before, swaying a little and turning his hands this way and that. As Lister approached, he could see immediately that something was extremely off about the way his bunkmate looked.

He was too … _pretty,_ like somebody had showered him in glitter. His brown hair shone with gingery flecks, his skin was perfectly smooth and softly glowing. He took Lister's breath away when he turned and held out his arms as if to show him what was happening. The hologram adopted an expression that was almost tender in nature. It suited him more than it should have, as did the lovely smile that sprung up out of nowhere.

Lister felt his heart thrum excitedly in his chest. His ability to reason was turned to dust.

"Arnie, I – you -" Unable to speak cohesively, he cleared his throat and tried again. "Yeh need to stop. Your battery is gonna die any second now. Why're you lightin' up the place?"

Rimmer's held tilted curiously. He looked Lister up and down with twinkling eyes, still smiling that sweet and thoroughly ill-matched smile.

"I thought I heard something," he murmured hazily. "Outside. And stop worrying. My bee's signal has latched onto another infrastructure."

Confused and enthralled, Lister rubbed the back of his neck and stared at his companion. He couldn't help it. It was like gazing upon a glowing jewel, or an angel. He had no idea that projection units were able to enhance their image in such a way, and he was clueless as to why the guy was choosing to do it here, of all places.

"Listy?" Rimmer murmured, drawing forwards with a look that was somehow both beseeching and inviting. "Will you help me look outside?"

Something was wrong. He was being far too polite and _nice_. Lister tried to back away, but he couldn't. It was like his brain was utterly fixated on the glowing spectre before him, and all he wanted was to do whatever it wanted. He wanted to touch it to see if it felt as wonderful as it looked.

So he did. He tentatively reached out and touched Rimmer's cheek. The hologram moved his face into his palm, much like a cat would.

"Y-yeah," Lister found himself saying. "Anythin' you want, man."

Bloody hell. It was worth it just for the smile.

But angels didn't exist. Rimmer wasn't sweet, and he certainly never smiled like that.

"But fair warnin'," Lister continued, removing his hand from the man's face. "As soon as we get out there, I'm bashin' your head in. Yeh can leave now, on your own, and avoid that, but I ain't getting eaten by you or your nasty GELF spawn, awright?"

It was a pleasure GELF. It had to be. It folded its arms and huffed, suddenly appearing much more Rimmer-like and rather more convincing, but Lister already had it sussed.

"I am _not_ a GELF. I'm just trying to be _nice_."

The words were like an echo of days past. Eerie, to say the least, but Lister still wasn't convinced. The thing could've worked its way into the hologram's memory bank somehow.

"Why're you trying to be nice?" he asked, humouring the creature to give himself time to think of a plan.

"Because I'm lonely, David Lister. I've been alone for so long. You start forgetting what being nice means, really."

David Lister? How did the thing know his name? Could it read the rest of his mind as well as his innermost desires?

"Er, who am I talkin' to?" he asked uncertainly, now completely befuddled.

The creature, still posing as Rimmer, rolled its eyes. "Ugh. Humans. I almost forgot how idiotic you all were. I _am_ the infrastructure hosting this device. I latched onto this light bee's signal to communicate with it. I exist within the planet's core. Two-million years ago, I was created and sent off to roam the Universe, looking for the answers to mankind's questions. I got bored of that, though, so I terraformed a planet around myself to try and create my own Earth. Thought it would be nice, you know, having little creatures wondering around on me. I'd never be lonely that way."

Lister rubbed his eyes to ensure that he wasn't dreaming. When he removed his hands, the glowing hologram was still watching him almost expectantly.

"Um, why did you …?" he began, not entirely sure how to phrase his question. "Why are you tryin' to seduce me into goin' outside, exactly?"

Rimmer began wringing his hands anxiously, much as he often did. It seemed the massive computer now operating him was borrowing from his various quirks and mannerisms, and it was extremely strange to watch.

"Well. About that. I'll tell you, I suppose. Just to be nice. I borrowed from those marvellous creatures on Earth, those angler fish. You know, the ones with the dangly lights that lure their prey into their maws? After observing your body language around this projection unit for a time, I thought I could use it to, well ..."

"Use it to what? Eat me? You're a smeggin' artificial intelligence!"

Rimmer worriedly tugged at his uniform's collar. "Look, my planet has become a chaotic mess. Some time ago, I drifted past a cluster of decimated planets. Something from them latched onto me, an enormous GELF queen that now resides under the ice, feasting off my home's energies. I have a parasite literally eating me and laying its gross little eggs everywhere! I thought if I feed her a sacrifice, she might consider leaving for greener pastures. You know?"

"No way, man. No way. We'll help yeh get rid of the queen if you help us get back to our ship, and maybe answer a few questions. There's no need for anybody to get eaten! Why's that the first idea you had?"

The computer appeared stuck for a moment. "Oh. Well, like I said, it's been lonely. The GELF doesn't like to talk when she's eating. Which is _all_ the time. Now that I think about it, your idea is probably the better one, so I've sent a homing beacon to your friends. They'll be able to land in the eye of the storm where it's calmer. In the meantime, carry on down into this cave and you'll come across my inner works. I'll be able to talk to you there and give you some weapons."

Lister sighed and rubbed his forehead wearily. "All right. You got a name?"

"Yes. Hubble VI. As a token of my appreciation, I'll answer one of your questions now."

Well. He could've asked the computer anything. Was there any way he could get back to Earth? Were there any human civilisations out there in the cosmos he could find and integrate into? And the age-old question: what was the meaning of life?

What came out of his mouth didn't exactly correspond with what was in his head. It was typical, wasn't it? A once in a lifetime chance crippled by his stupid brain.

"What's the difference between love and hate?"

Rimmer's head tilted as Hubble VI calculated an answer. His eyes went somewhat fuzzy for a few seconds.

"Biologically, the same parts of your brain are involved when feeling either love or hate. Your cerebral cortex – the part responsible for your ability to reason – takes a huge hit, too. In all honesty, little has changed in that department since you were mindless apes moping about in caves. Love and hate are a product of human evolution, both means by which you can achieve your goals and be successful, whether it be to find a mate or kill the rival that's been eyeing them up. The two just come hand in hand, really. To answer your question, the two could be considered a singular, nameless entity, an emotion that drives you to behave or think in an impassioned manner. Your human morality forces this passion into love and hate, good and bad, but the line between both has always been thin." Rimmer paused, eyeing Lister with a raised eyebrow. "To answer more appropriately regarding your little quandary, you are perceiving your strong feelings in a different way to how you used to. That's about as much as I can say. I'm a computer, not an agony aunt."

Lister was certain his question had finally been answered, but he wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. He bowed his head and contemplated the explanation as best he could, except he didn't really have the mind for such things. He had always just gone with the wind, as it were, but had since been blown into a wall with no way up or around.

"Can I have me mate back, now?" he asked, scuffing his foot on the ground and refusing to look upwards.

"Fine. Continue downwards, then. Oh, and watch out for GELF spawn. This particular breed are almost the opposite of pleasure GELFs. They'll inflict visions of your worst fears. Got it?"

Without waiting for a reply, Hubble VI relinquished their presence in Rimmer's light bee. The hologram flinched and took several steps backwards, hands immediately landing upon his midriff. More of a concern, apparently, was his own appearance, and he took the time to look down over himself with wide eyes.

"Lister, would you care to tell me why I look like I've been having the time of my life in the Cat's wardrobe?"

Lister quickly moved to his bunkmate and held his arm to keep him steady. "Your bee is bein' overclocked to its limits, that's why. I mean, it looks great, but yeh'd better cool it off before somethin' burns out. You just got overtaken by the -"

"Hubble VI. I know, Lister."

The poor Scouser felt his blood turn cold. "What else has it told yeh?"

"Uh, something about a parasitic queen latched to this planet's crust. We do get all the disgusting missions, don't we? Where are the others?"

"On their way. We've gotta head down there," Lister said, gesturing at the gaping, dark tunnel behind him and hoping his relief wasn't evident. He saw Rimmer's throat bob in a fearful swallow.

"Ah. Well, I may just leave myself in overdrive until we find some light. Hubble VI has more than enough energy to keep it maintained. I think."

Walking proved difficult for Lister, whose leg throbbed painfully with every step. Though he tried to hide his pain as they made off down the volcanic cavern, he ended up with one arm wrapped around Rimmer's shoulders so that he could lean on him as they went. It proved a little easier, but they were forced to go slowly to make up for his unideal condition.

There was nothing like almost being fed to a giant GELF by an attention-starved computer to get him thinking about things. If he _had_ to say something to Rimmer, then it was better done sooner rather than later.

Lister had never thought of himself a gutless coward, but he definitely felt like one, now. It didn't help that the hologram still appeared as the creature meant to seduce him, all of his good features ridiculously enhanced into synthetic beauty and his projection working in blindingly gorgeous 16k definition. The more Lister chanced subtle glances in his direction, the more he wished for them to come across a lit corridor so that Rimmer could return to his usual self.

Gutless, spineless idiot. All the things he called Rimmer on a daily basis. It hardly seemed fair now that Lister couldn't summon up the courage to speak frankly about what he was feeling. His excuse was that he wasn't just staying quiet for his own sanity, but for the other man's, too.

"God, will you hurry up, Lister? I feel like I'm dragging a reluctant walrus to its deathbed."

And to think this was the guy he was agonising over.

"Did you just call me a walrus? Bloody smegger. I'll shove a walrus sideways up your bum if you start whingin'."

"We're about to kill a parasitic GELF on behalf of a crazed computer. I'll _whinge_ all I like, matey."

"I guess yeh haven't tried to run away, yet. That's somewhat impressive."

Rimmer snorted. "Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll run away and build myself a castle of ice where I'll gather all my penguin friends every Sunday afternoon and treat them to blancmange."

"You have friends? That's a good one."

The pair continued bickering for several long minutes. They were still relatively fresh from their recent arguments, of course, and still angry, but they only really had each other in their bizarre situation, at least until Cat and Kryten could reach them. Lister was growing more and more peeved that it was becoming such a struggle to walk across the uneven ground, and he was too proud to let his companion carry him again, thinking that if Rimmer wanted to help to that extent, he already would have asked.

The black walls of the tunnel eventually evened out into something more artificial. Even further along, everything was so sleek and shiny that the walls turned completely reflective, presumably some sort of volcanic glass that had been meticulously chiselled away by someone.

Rimmer stopped walking and darted over to the wall, staring at his own reflection in disbelief. Lister took the opportunity to stop and rest for a moment.

"Lister, look! What the hell did that electronic gimboid do to me? My ears are smaller! And my nose has shrunk. My hair isn't springing out in every direction! I'm … I'm _handsome_. At last, I don't have to look in the mirror every day and see Shaggy Rogers' long lost twin."

No sooner as he said it, the heavenly light he was emitting from his body suddenly went out and his holographic form returned to normal.

"Oh."

Fortunately, the tunnel was dimly lit there on out by long, white tubes set beneath the clear floor. Lister surmised that Hubble VI had deemed it wise to stop sending so much energy Rimmer's way now that they could actually see where they were going without it. Poor Rimmer's immediate disappointment was evident, so Lister approached and gave him a kindly pat on the back.

"You didn't need it. Honest."

"Then why did it do it in the first place?"

"Er … I dunno. Maybe it's never seen somethin' like you before and wanted to experiment a bit," the Scouser lied, wincing as he did. "Yeh look like you again. It's better. How's your bee?"

Pulling a face, Rimmer pried himself away from his reflection and brought an arm around the other man's waist to resume helping him walk.

"Fine," he grumbled, his ears flushing pink for reasons unknown. It was a rather fetching look, and one more appealing because it was more like him than a superficial, angelic glow. "I think you've taken one too many hits on the head, personally."

It happened, then.

Something inside Lister snapped, and for once, it wasn't his temper. Forgetting the pain he was in, he awkwardly steered Rimmer toward the wall and pressed the other man's back against it. For a silly amount of time, they just stood there and looked at each other, Rimmer befuddled and Lister determined, the latter with his hands placed either side of the former to ensnare him.

"You look positively rabid. What on earth is the matter?" Rimmer asked nervously, assuming a slight defensive stance. "Look, I'm still angry at you, too -"

"Forget that," Lister demanded. His mind was a confusing mixture of blank and haywire, both excited and trying to disassociate from what he was doing. "I don't wanna startle yeh, but there's just somethin' I really need to do. Just for a sec. Just in case one or both of us snuffs it."

Why now? He wasn't quite sure. He had been at the breaking point for a good while, diligently holding himself back and trying to think about other things. He had encouraged arguments to try and replace fondness with anger, but it hadn't helped. He had never, not once, acted on his stupid attraction to the guy.

Maybe he had taken one or two nasty knocks to the head. Maybe he was just sick to death of pretending he wasn't feeling what he was. It wasn't like him to lie to himself. Not all the time.

As desperation took hold, he held the front of Rimmer's smock and then leaned in to gently press their lips together.

It was nice. There were no celebratory fireworks, but Lister felt a lovely contentment seep through his limbs, which was even better. He had kissed other blokes before, but almost always as gestures of friendship as opposed to anything else. This was different. He really meant it, and he tried to show that through tender ministrations, taking advantage of his partner's paralysed state to proper go for it.

God, but his mouth was so nice and soft. Lister could have kissed it all day. So entranced was he that he barely noticed being weakly pushed away.

And then came the horrible reminder that acting on impulse often came with consequences. He always had to do it, didn't he? He always had to act without thinking.

But he _had_ thought about it. An awful lot, actually. It was just in that moment he hadn't been able to take any more.

Rimmer turned an assortment of colours very quickly. He went from red to purple, then to green, then to a rather sickly white. There was even a slight emulation of sweat on his forehead. He didn't appear as traumatised as Lister had imagined, but he was definitely shocked by what had just happened, and who could blame him? The guy who swapped insults with him on a daily basis had just moulded their mouths together in a kiss that had been far from unpleasant.

Regardless, the hologram rudely wiped his mouth on a sleeve and adopted an expression that would have been more suited to stepping in something disgusting.

"Did one of them dare you to do that?" he finally asked. "I'm sick of being the subject of your crude bets, Lister."

"That's not it, man," Lister replied sheepishly, scratching nervously at one of his hands. His reply must have been convincing enough, because Rimmer's face fell a second time.

"Then what?"

What was it that old song said? It's now or never. The words had never applied so patently in his life. Hell, it wasn't like he could make up some rubbish excuse to try and explain away what he had just done.

"I, erm ..." He clenched his eyes shut and braced himself for the turmoil. "I _like_ yeh. I mean, I wasn't sure, so I did that to kinda figure it out. I've gotten a bit fond of yeh and it's been drivin' me crazy. I'm sorry if I surprised you, kay? And I know yeh've got all these voices firing off, tellin' you it's wrong, but it really ain't, Arn. I know what I'm feelin' isn't wrong."

Rimmer looked like he had just been punched across the face. It was an improvement on the suspicious look he had been acquiring as Lister spoke.

"It's fine if you just wanna forget I did anythin'. I can deal with tha'. I couldn't deal with you not knowin'. It wasn't fair."

"I don't think becoming fond of someone involves snogging them out of the blue, really, does it?"

"Well, sometimes!" Lister retorted defensively. "Just forget it, 'kay?"

"You're just -"

"Nah, Rimmer! I'm not space-crazy, I'm not desperate, and I'm not thinkin' of somebody else."

The hologram looked as if he was about to pass out. Lister made to help him, holding onto his arms to keep him upright.

"Kochanski?" was all Rimmer could manage. Lister glanced downwards and shook his head.

"No. Things change, don't they? Stuff happens that you don't really expect, sometimes, but you've gotta roll with it. That's life, innit?"

Arnold ran a hand through his mop of curls, dislodging the gel that had been neatly holding it in place. He didn't seem to know what to do with himself. Taking in Lister's sincere expression, he again appeared as if he was about to flop to the ground like a dead fish.

"You're being serious, aren't you?" he asked, following a nervous gulp.

"Yeah, man."

"Listy, I don't – I'm not – There's no …"

At first, Lister thought that Rimmer was stammering, but he quickly realised that he was actually glitching, given the occasional distortion whenever he changed sentences. There was no way that he could help stop it, other than calm the hologram down and hope that he didn't give himself malware. Unfortunately enough, malware was a frequent occurrence when this particular hologram was involved, as the viruses were nothing more than overloading of things like bitterness, resentment, or self-doubt.

"Rimmer, don't worry about it, all right? I won't bring it up again, I swear."

The projection abruptly dissolved. It was something of a failsafe that Kryten installed to help prevent the viruses. When in doubt, just switch something off and on again.

But the light bee didn't turn back on. It just bounced off the glass floor and rolled somewhere close to Lister's left foot. It was one way of avoiding an awkward conversation, he supposed, as be bent down to pick it up and gaze somewhat morosely at it.

"I know yeh can hear me, Arn. I can't explain none o' this. I hope we can still be mates."

With a frown, he slipped the light bee into his coat pocket.

Though he felt terrible, something within him felt at peace, too. He'd finally had the balls to say it, and now he could never regret not saying a word.

But had it been the right thing?


	3. Louder Than Words

He carried on walking for what felt like miles. It was difficult, given his painful leg, which was now screaming at him to stop and rest, but he'd prove of little use stuck in some tunnel somewhere within the planet's crust. Perhaps the journey seemed that much longer because as he went, he was slowly becoming more and more mortified.

Lister wasn't all right. He hadn't been for a while. His brain wasn't in a good spot, and much of it had culminated in the fiasco that occurred a small while back when he had stupidly told that idiot smeghead _everything_. He hadn't quite accepted it, just yet, for his mind was likely still in a state of shock, and the memory still passed as something he could have put down to being a mere dream. A stupid, messed up dream.

But it hadn't been that at all.

Lister wasn't the smartest guy around and he'd be the first to admit it. He was an _all right_ guy, though. Decent, open-minded, and he had some common sense. He knew when something was stupid and when it wasn't. At any other point in his life, he would have been able to stop himself from doing what he had just done. Had all those poets actually been right when they'd moaned that love did whacky stuff to the brain and turned people into complete tossers?

He didn't want to think that far ahead just yet, because when Rimmer ultimately told him to go jump off a bridge, it would just be all the more painful.

With an exhausted sigh, Lister stopped for a moment, eyeing the end of the tunnel ahead. He could tell it was the last of the volcanic rock and the beginning of something entirely man-made, but when he eventually approached, he ascertained that the metal door blocking his path was, in turn, blocked off by the remnants of a cave-in. Chunks of rock and glass littered the floor, piling up into something he had no hope of moving by himself.

He pushed his way past some of the smaller blocks and tapped on the black screen located on the pure white wall beside the door. While he waited, he looked over the writing he could just about see underneath the monitor, but couldn't make head nor tail of it. It looked like Korean, or it could have been a younger offshoot of the language developed long after the incident on Red Dwarf.

"Hubble? Y'there?"

A black-haired woman appeared on the monitor. Like Holly, there was something incredibly human about her appearance, not just in her expressions or quirks, but the sentience that she was able to present in her eyes. It was the mark of a good AI for him, because he'd met so many in his time that had the glassy, dead-eyed stare typical of machines that had never been able to break past their programming to any extent.

"You're finally here. I almost forgot about you," Hubble VI chided. Ignoring the jab, Lister instead waved slightly in greeting.

"Got a bit of a problem here, miss. You're blocked off. See?" he said, pointing at the enormous pile of rubble. "No way I can move any o' that. Oh, and any chance you've got air-con or somethin'? All the steam is roastin' me alive."

"Did you really just ask if I have air-con?" the computer replied incredulously. "I have it on full power _all_ the time. Do you have any idea how hot it gets inside a planet's core? In hindsight, I should've thought about it before turning myself _into_ a planet, I suppose, but I can't do much about it, now. Where's your hologram? He should be able to move the rocks out of the way."

"Oh, er ..." Lister tapped the pocket the light bee was ensconced in. "He ain't comin' out."

Hubble VI blinked. "Well, that's one way to put it."

"Oh, funny one, you, ain't yeh? Why don't you mind your own business, eh? Think of somethin' else! Preferably before I get turned into roast chicken!"

The doors behind the cave-in suddenly began to shudder and creak. Slowly, they began to slide apart, the rocks scraping heavily and leaving nasty scratchmarks across their surfaces. A pleasant breeze passed through the gap and worked to cool Lister off somewhat, much to his relief.

Once the doors were open, the rock pile flattened a bit as some of the debris tumbled into the newly revealed corridor. Lister cracked his knuckes and pulled himself up onto the heap, navigating his way over jagged stones and glass and whatever else until he could squeeze his way into the vibrantly white tunnel ahead.

The Knowledge Station's innards were extremely elegant. Soft, white lights lined the ceilings and walls. Paintings, now faded with age, hung on the walls, and ancient busts carved from meteorite guarded each closed door. There was a constant cool breeze, and there were even bowls of mints set at every corner.

Chewing on a mint probably long past its use-by-date, Lister again tapped on a monitor he came across, which was set neatly into the wall and surrounded by a faux Renaissance style frame.

"Hubble, all the signs are in Korean or somethin'. Where do I go to get me leg sorted and have a good kip?"

The computer's face again appeared with a soft, digital _fwoosh_. She looked him up and down for a few seconds, her gaze critical but not entirely unfriendly.

"Not everybody was allowed to enter a Knowledge Station, you know," she replied matter-of-factly, ignoring his question. "You lot would've been turned away at the hangar, once upon a time."

"What, 'cause we're not nobby Admirals or what have yeh? Did the Space Corps own this place by any chance?"

"No, but they heavily sponsored my creation and research. I suppose you can _borrow_ some things that might be of use to you, however. Go down to Level 5 and visit one of the medi-bots there while I dig them out."

He didn't particularly enjoy being ordered about by a computer, but this was Hubble VI's station, so Lister refrained from pulling a face and shuffled over to the closest lift with a frown, jabbing a finger onto one of the buttons.

The place was extremely superior to Red Dwarf. The air was cleaner, and it was bright and faultless, a stark contrast to the mining ship's dark and old-fashioned interior. Robots of all shapes and sizes roamed the labyrinth of passages, some of them sweeping or cleaning, others carrying books and various equipment. One of them, a tall and faceless robot that operated on a single wheel, approached Lister once he reached the infirmary and removed his coat before scooting off to stand at one side. Lister retrieved the light bee before he forgot it, shoving it into his back pocket.

The mechanical denizens of the station only served to disturb Lister somewhat. Their heads were light grey, smooth, and bore no eyes or mouths. Though they were clearly far more advanced than the likes of Kryten, they were also far less human, both in appearance and personality. He doubted whether they even _had_ personalities, or even any kind of true sentience at all, but he wasn't in a position to question it.

Hopping up onto one of the infirmary beds, he laid back and nervously eyed the robot that approached. A red cross on its forehead indicated its purpose, and it did it better than he expected, gently cleaning him up and then attaching a comfortable contraption to his leg that would help keep it straight. A small while later, it even brought him a large, hot meal – and he was surprised to find it was composed of many of his favourite foods. Curry, mostly, along with a bizarre mixture of other things. He didn't mind, of course, for his taste could be rather out of the ordinary.

"How'd you know what I like?" he asked the robot, not entirely sure whether it had the capacity to answer.

"I uploaded your hologram's database onto my system when I received his signal," the robot replied, and it was the voice of Hubble VI. It was then Lister understood that the bots weren't their own beings, but were instead the computer's hands and feet, the things that could go to places that an artificial intelligence couldn't. "I know everything about you that he does."

Unsure whether he liked that bit of information, Lister rubbed the back of his neck. Holly, at least, would have respected the crew's privacy, but he supposed millions of years of isolation affected computers differently.

Once, he might have used the computer's knowledge to his advantage, asking embarrassing questions about his bunkmate and harnessing information with which to attack him at a later moment. Now, however, Lister just settled down underneath his blanket and tried to rest, exhausted both physically and emotionally. Despite his troubles, sleep came easily, and he freely allowed the darkness to wash over him, ending the cold ache in his chest.

* * *

The place was too bright. He hated it. As he slowly came to, he could see the stark whiteness of the place behind his eyes.

And he wasn't in his bed any more.

With a long-suffering moan of reluctance, Lister sat up and observed his surroundings. He definitely wasn't in the infirmary any more, and so had been moved at some point during what he thought was going to be a few hours of peace. Why couldn't he just be left alone for five minutes? Was the pursuit of knowledge really worth it if the computer responsible was intent on driving him insane?

It seemed safe to assume that by this point. He was in a giant, round room that was shaped and coloured like a golf ball. There was no apparent door, or windows. Only faint lines where the small, square wall panels met each other.

Glancing down, he saw the contraption was still on his leg. His head was bandaged, too, and he was wearing different clothes: a pale-green boiler suit and black boots. It reminded him of something a prisoner would wear, though that thought could have been influenced by his strange surroundings, which were beginning to feel very claustrophobic despite the ball-shaped room's spacious size.

Growing concerned, he felt about in his myriad of pockets for the light bee, seeking it more for the reassurance that he wasn't alone more than anything else, but he was dismayed to find it gone, likely removed with the rest of his clothes.

"Hubble? Y'there?" he enquired, his voice forced into a near whisper because the stillness and silence of the room was so intensely intimidating.

"Yes," came the instant reply, echoing about the walls. Had she been observing him the whole time? "Welcome to Evaluation Chamber 7. I told you I'd let you borrow something to use against the GELFs, and I think I've picked something tailored to your abilities. Mind you, it was difficult, given that I was distracted by all the snoring."

"Sorry," Lister had the decency to say. Rimmer always complained that his snoring was truly Biblical in proportions and that a rhinoceros with severe flatulence couldn't hold a candle to him. Holly, for once, had agreed with him. "What abilities? If yeh've got a pack of cans and a Les Paul lined up, I'm yeh man."

"I don't mean your talents, or lack thereof. I meant – Ugh, never mind. Just pick up this weapon I'm sending through."

To his immediate left, one of the floor panels flipped and a small pedestal rose smoothly and silently. It bore a delightfully chunky and impressive looking object that almost resembled a bazookoid, but it was larger and shinier and had way more buttons. Carelessly forgetting his predicament, Lister picked the weapon up and found it lighter than it looked. He hoisted the strap over his shoulder and practised taking aim.

" _Cool_. What is it?" he asked, fondling the various switches and dials attached to the side.

"I call it a breacher. The red button toggles on the laser-aim. The trigger sets off the blast. It'll create a million microscopic black holes in a contained force-field. The higher the dial, the bigger the field becomes. Any matter caught within the radius will be ripped apart. You can destroy anything with this weapon, David Lister, so long as it can fit inside the field."

The boy in him was squealing. The rest of him wasn't so sure. The weapon was massively dangerous, and he wasn't entirely comfortable with being responsible for it. Then again … it was _really_ cool.

"What're the other buttons?"

"Cigarette lighter, radio, and that purple thing blinks if you overcharge the shot. Please, take care not to aim it at a person, or at any part of my Station that isn't this facility. I'm giving you this because you can be trusted not to use it unless absolutely necessary, but I'll only allow it's use if you can pass the trial run I am about to issue. Is that fair?"

"Uh," Lister muttered uncertainly, sparing a glance about the empty room. "I s'pose. What am I shootin' at, then?"

He wished he'd never asked, really. It was a frame of mind he often found himself in.

No sooner had he asked the question, his stomach lurched as the room faded out of existence and was replaced briefly with pure, sickening darkness. Then, an entire world manifested around him. Trees, sunlight, a stretch of grass. There were even insects buzzing about, and he swore he felt one of them actually brush against his face, like it was real and he was actually back on Earth or some Earth-like planet.

It was impossible, of course. The truth was that it was a simulated environment. He'd seen it once before, back during his training period before becoming a technician, only he'd been shown how to fix several different brands of vending machines that were all equally as dull as each other – and he hadn't been able to touch anything without his hand passing through it. Only the holographic tutor had been able to interact with the environment. Here, Hubble VI had achieved true hard-light.

His heart ached slightly as he knelt down to feel the grass and the soft earth. It felt painfully real. He would've preferred the grimy back streets of his home town, but this was better than nothing, even if nothing of what he was seeing or feeling was actually there.

"Practice shot," Hubble VI demanded, her voice booming out of the pale blue sky. Lister glanced up with mild affront.

"Look, I usually have a cig and a pint before I even think about getting out of bed, and yeh want me to rip stuff apart with this thing?"

"Oh, for the love of _Voyager_! Just shoot the damned thing before I remove it from you."

Itching for a smoke, Lister exhaled frustratedly and fiddled about with the dial on the side of the breacher, setting it to a reasonable level. With a smidge of reluctance, he pointed the weapon at a nearby tree and turned on the laser-aim to ensure a direct it. Taking a moment, he held down the trigger to charge the shot, and then released it, watching as a blast of hot, orange energy shot out of the end of the barrel and slammed into the trunk of the tree.

A white forcefield suddenly erupted from the impact point, engulfing the tree and several others around it like a soap bubble. A split second later, there was nothing left inside the bubble but tiny chunks of wood and leaf, like they had all been shoved inside a giant shredder and spat out the other side. The parts rained down as the forcefield quickly vanished, pattering onto the grass and the small crater that had been left as a result of the destruction issued by the breacher.

Lister looked down at the weapon, stunned. Nothing like it should have ever been created, and he actually felt uncomfortable with what he had just done, even if the trees had only been a simulation.

"Good. Are you ready for stage two?" Hubble asked.

"I think I've got a good idea of what this thing does, miss."

"Moving on to stage two. Hit the moving targets."

He had expected target dummies, painted bits of wood, or even flying plates. What he got, however, made him feel even more sick, and he realised that his preconception of Hubble VI being one of the few remaining sane computers in existence had been entirely wrong.

A bewildered looking hologram in a white uniform manifested close by. Then another. Then another. They all looked down at themselves in disbelief, just like he imagined most holograms did when they were switched on and their last memory was their horrible death. All three of them turned to him for some sort of explanation, eyes questioning and entirely innocent.

"Hit the moving targets," Hubble VI repeated.

The holograms took one look at Lister's breacher, and then scarpered, terrified for their lives. That was all Lister needed to see. He took off the strap and then dropped the breacher onto the grass stubbornly.

He heard cries of fear in the distance. Closing his eyes, he gave the three individuals privacy as their projections were abruptly switched off.

"I knew it. I knew you were loopy!" the technician snapped. "All these years on your own can't have been good for your circuits, could they? I knew it was a bad idea to come lookin' for yeh! You might have a ginormous IQ but yeh've got no regard for life! Let me out of here, I wanna see the others."

"Life?" Hubble repeated cluelessly. "They were holograms. They were a simulation of people who once worked onboard here. Artificial entities are not living beings, David Lister, so it's all right to use them for testing or recreational purposes, or to retain their professional abilities. What do you use your hologram for if not for those purposes?"

"Oh, my god. Of course they're people! They're sentient! Have some bleedin' respect for the dead, would yeh? Yeh can't just use 'em willy-nilly just 'cause they're not humans any more. Those three were terrified!" Raising his hands to his forehead, Lister began pacing irritatedly, horrified by what he had just seen. "It would be like if someone just came and switched you off without a care. All your brains and potential just snuffed out. You can't do stuff like that!"

"I'm not a person," Hubble countered. "I find it a bit funny, though, that a third technician from the scummiest district of a city on some worthless speck of a planet feels that he can enforce his primitive moral code onto an intergalactic super-computer."

"I'm not tryin' to force anythin'! I'm sayin' that you should know better."

"If mere holograms and other AI are lives to be saved, David Lister, then what of the GELFs that are feeding from my planet? Hm? They are certainly sentient, and thus they must be considered people, by your logic. If they were filling your every crevice with eggs and leeching your body's energy, I'm sure that you would change your mind instantaneously. Whatever the case, we made a deal. Pick up that breacher and continue practicing, or I won't be obliged to hold up my end of the bargain."

Damn it all. She'd stumped him with that one. Anything he had done to GELFs had been out of self-defence, and it wasn't like he enjoyed fighting them whenever they attacked the crew. Choosing to ignore the computer's logic, he instead (carefully) kicked the breacher aside and folded his arms.

"Nah. I'm not shootin' any holograms, and I'm not usin' that weapon full stop. Thanks for thinkin' of me when yeh found it, I guess, but it ain't really my cup of tea any more. Can I _please_ leave this room and find the others? Have Cat and Kryten arrived yet? Where's Rimmer?"

"They're all undergoing their own tests. It seems I'm going to have to fail you, David Lister. You won't be accompanying the crew on the mission to the GELF queen. I expected more from the single human aboard Red Dwarf, but then again, it was a JMC mining ship. Your pets are performing far better than yourself, with the exception of – Oh. Nevermind. They've all failed. The first non-GELFs I've come across for centuries and centuries, and you're all total idiots."

Lister shrugged agreeably. "Well, yeah."

"Then we have some work to do. Activating teleportation sequence 3. Keep your feet apart and hands by your sides."

With little time to acknowledge and abide Hubble VI's intructions, Lister lurched backwards as the simulated environment around him was abruptly swept away, much as before. Instead of reappearing in the rounded research chamber, he stumbled and fell backwards onto his bum in what looked like a dentist's waiting room.

Gathering his senses, Lister winced and rubbed at his now throbbing rear before pulling himself up into a white leather armchair. He was really starting to dislike Hubble VI and her lack of consideration for just about anything, such as their well-being and their privacy, but he forced himself to recognise over and over that loneliness did some strange things to people and machines alike. Of course she would be abrupt, and of course she would have shaken off a more human sense of morality having had countless years to create her own. With a bit of guidance, she could become the greatest thing to ever happen to the Red Dwarf crew, what with her intellect, inventions, and all round brilliance.

If he kept her sweet, there was always a chance of getting to other humans, or even to Earth.

Cat suddenly appeared in a flash of white. He too stumbled a little, though with far more grace, and managed to catch himself on the plant pot in the corner before falling. The poor creature looked utterly traumatised, his fangs bared and fingers contorted into shapes that resembled claws, and he attempted to swipe the air a few times as if fending off an invisible assailant.

Lister quickly stood up and took hold of his friend's arms to try and settle him down. The effect was almost instantaneous as soon as Cat recognised that it was him.

"Squirrel-Cheeks?"

"Cat! Are you all right?"

"Do I _look_ all right, smeghead? Do that rubby thing under my chin! I need to feel loved again. Please!" Cat begged insistently, raising his head and gesturing frantically at his neck.

With a slight huff, Lister reluctantly reached up and scratched the soft underside of the man's chin. The feline instantly relaxed, his eyes becoming half-lidded and entirely satisfied.

"Aw, yeah, that's the spot! Just keep doin' that until I say stop, got it?"

"What happened in there? And what happened after me and Rimmer got sucked outta Starbug?"

Cat's perfectly shaped brows furrowed. "Some blinky thing showed up and lead us to the hangar door. Man, it was huge! Coulda fit Red Dwarf into that thing! Next thing I know, I'm bein' dropped into some ball room in this stylish green little number, and then – and _then_ … Aw, I can't say it. Don't make me say it!"

"Uh, all right, yeh don't have to -"

"I'm gonna say it anyways! The nasty voice thing tried to make me give all my clothes to some crumby charity shop in Slough. Who's gonna buy a metallic sequin bomber jacket in Slough?! Anyways, the kindly old Goalpost-Head behind the counter turned into some giant dog monster and tried to eat me. I had these golden claw things the voice lady gave me, but they went so well with this suit, I just couldn't bear getting _red_ on them, so I ran away! Now I'm here!" Obviously upset, Cat pushed away Lister's hand and stalked off to curl up in one of the armchairs.

Trying to make sense out of the other man's tale, Lister scratched his head. Everything was getting a bit more complicated than he had expected, and he wished more than anything to be back on Red Dwarf, kicking back with a lager and watching some cooking show that he had already watched five-hundred times before.

It was Kryten's turn to appear, looking rather ridiculous in the same pale green boilersuit that the others were wearing. The mechanoid flopped stiffly down onto his front. Upon coming to, his head jerked this way and that as he tried to figure out his location. Lister bent over and offered his friend his hand.

"Yo, Krytes. You all in one piece?"

"Well, I – I think so, sir. What about you?" Kryten asked quickly, taking Lister's hand and giving him a brief once-over, gazing fixing upon the various injuries he found. "I thought we had lost you once you got slurped out of that hole in Starbug. I'm glad to find that you're scraped up as opposed to needing to _be_ scraped up, Mister Lister. I was expecting little more than 'Pudlian pancake."

"Made of hard stuff, me. What the heck did she make you do in there?"

The mechanoid's face mushed into a thoroughly rattled expression. He stiffly clambered to his feet and brushed himself off, sniffing loudly.

"Oh, it was awful, sirs. Truly awful! I was forced to witness the worst scenario conceivable. Both you and my creator were injured, but there was only enough power in the molecular regeneration unit she gave me to bring one of you back from the brink of death. I am programmed not to harm my creator, whether directly or not, and of course I would never see you come to harm, either. I couldn't do it, I couldn't reason my way through such a moral dilemma! I failed the test."

Lister offered a smile and gave his friend a firm pat on the back. "It's okay. No one could have dealt with that. Yeh didn't fail anythin'. You see what she was doin', right? She was tryin' to make us act against our beliefs, or our programmin'. It was like she was tryin' to bring out the worst in us. I guess if we're gonna go commit genocide on some giant slime monster and her offspring, she doesn't want us to think about what we're doin'."

Kryten nervously tapped his fingertips together. "Sir, are you suggesting that we should spare the creatures? They're devouring the planet as we speak. No doubt they have claimed the home worlds of other tribes, too."

"I don't think we should be makin' decisions of this scale. Know what I mean? I know it'll come at a cost, but after seein' the methods she's keen to use, it doesn't feel right, Kryten. Doesn't feel right in me gut."

"Well, I doubt you have eaten anything since this morning, sir."

Well, that was a point, too, if not the one Lister was trying to make.

It was Rimmer's turn to appear in a flash of white. Reacting quickly, he slammed back against the wall and stared about himself with wide eyes, breathing heavily through his nostrils. Like everybody else, he had been forced into one of the pastel-green boilersuits, only something else had changed about his appearance, too: the 'H' emblazoned on his forehead no longer had its blue sheen, but was instead purely silver and reflective, like a mirror.

Seeing the others, the man slowly pried himself off the wall and cautiously approached, a wholesome relief evident.

"Are you real?" he asked, his face paling spectacularly.

"Yeah, man," Lister responded, allowing his voice to soften momentarily. "Glad you're okay."

"What happened to _you?_ " Cat asked the hologram, unfolding himself from the armchair.

Rimmer looked slightly confused for a moment, absent-mindedly rubbing a hand over his midriff. After a moment to collect himself, he squared his shoulders and began moving about the room, surveying the small paintings and ornaments decorating the small space. They were innocent things – pictures of the seaside or buildings, and ornaments of cats and dogs in various states of rest, but Rimmer treated them with great suspicion, turning them about in his hands.

Lister wasn't sure if he just needed something to do or if there was something to be genuinely concerned about. Whatever the case, he opted to let the man reveal any information in his own time, first, figuring that he had probably since earned a one way passage into his bad books.

"None of your smegging business," Rimmer said eventually, lips curled in a vicious sneer. "If you had any sense, you'd be questioning our gracious host's sanity. Never trust a computer. Bonkers, the lot of them! I say we get this total charade over with as soon as possible so that we can make a beeline back to Red Dwarf. What's the plan?"

Everybody turned to look at Lister, who shrugged nonchalently in response. In truth, he was torn. Killing the GELFs felt wrong, and yet he wanted more than anything to have Hubble fix Starbug and answer all of his questions about life and the Universe. How often did somebody get the chance that he had? Was he really going to throw it away over some blob-monsters from a distant part of space?

Being a good person was really difficult, sometimes.

"I don't think we should do what she wants," he said, trying to hide his own uncertainty. "We need to think of a way off of this thing without killing anythin'. There must be another way we can help her out."

Rimmer finally met his gaze, though only briefly. "Lister, I recognise that you took quite the tumble earlier, so I'm willing to ignore the utter stupidity in what you just said. The GELFs would kill you on sight if they found you. They would hack off your skin and wear it like a trophy. They'd put your gizzards into soup and feed you to their queen. There's nothing heroic in sparing their lives, especially when this computer could give us anything that we need."

"She just told me that they're sentient! We might be able to reason with 'em, instead! There's no need to go to war, we've just gotta think of somethin' else! We could ask 'em to go to another planet."

"Ah, yes, magnificent plan, Listy. Let's just roll up to the slobbering, grotesque parasite they call their queen and politely ask if she'll detach herself from her meal because it's causing a bit of a hinderance. Better yet, why don't we roll over like dogs and expose our bellies to make it easier for her to harvest your organs? We could even set out all the plates and cutlery ready, just to be polite."

Lister rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger before pinching the bridge of his nose, truly torn over what to do. He didn't want anything bad to happen to his crewmates. He didn't want them to be stuck on this barren planet, but at the same time, he didn't want them to resort to violence, either.

"It doesn't have to be like tha'," he tried to reason. "Let's just think about things before we go jumpin' into somethin' we're gonna regret."

"Think about things? Isn't that the total, total opposite of what you usually do? You must be feeling rather unwell. In fact, I don't believe you're in any state to vocalise your opinions, addled as they are. I say we group up and find a way to take the monster by surprise."

The Scouser glared at his bunkmate, trying his hardest to bite his tongue, but the awfully smug expression of superiority on the hologram's face made it entirely impossible.

"That sounds really bold, comin' from you. Yeh sure you ain't gonna just run off at the last second and leave us to do all the dirty work? Wouldn't be the first time, would it? Yeh can try and leave me behind, if you want, but we all know what happens when you're left in charge of a mission. You just mess everythin' up! You're total pants at this kinda thing!"

Rimmer's nostrils flared. Oh, smeg. He was going to bring up the one thing that Lister didn't want him to bring up in front of Cat and Kryten, who were watching the argument like it was a tennis match. He braced himself, hands balling into fists.

"If that's what you think, Lister, then you have very low standards. I'm not entirely sure why I ever thought otherwise."

"Oi! I don't have low standards, but I guess me expectations are set way too high!"

"It's called pragmatism, Lister! I don't believe in the impossible. I just want to get us all off this hideous planet before we become _stuck_ here with a barmy, glorified telescope telling us what to do!"

Chancing a glance at the others, Lister saw that they resembled two children watching their parents have an argument; Kryten mortified and Cat oddly intrigued. He then realised that he was stood mere inches from the hologram, and had his finger jabbing into his chest. It was an all too frequent occurrence, only now things were made all the more difficult by the fact that he didn't actually want to be arguing anymore.

To calm himself down, he allowed himself to become momentarily distracted. Rimmer always looked nice in green. It brought out his eyes. He even looked good when he was angry, for his wild and serpentine sneers always offset his well-groomed and tidy appearance.

The kiss had been amazing, hadn't it?

No. God, he couldn't think about that right now.

The two men glared at each other like a pair of wolves. It was then Lister realised that Rimmer only wanted the same thing that he did, only he had very different ways of going about it. They both just wanted to go home with everybody intact. They just wanted things to go back to normal. Relatively, anyway, Lister thought, doing his utmost to keep his gaze fixed on Rimmer's eyes and absolutely nowhere else.

"We're not gonna get stuck here," Lister said firmly. "We're gonna use our brains and think of another way out of it. I'm not gonna let anythin' happen to you lot."

"Well, you'd better get thinking then, miladdo. It seems to have escaped your notice that this room doesn't actually have a way out. We've been plopped straight into another research chamber, and I tell you this, I am _not_ fighting off _another_ polymorph!"

Forgetting whatever it was he had to say next, Lister looked around at the walls and saw that the other man was right. There was no door, no windows, nothing that would allow them to leave this room save for Hubble teleporting them out. He closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled, because in that moment, it was all he _could_ do.

It must have been another test. Hubble VI had said there was work to be done, though he wasn't entirely sure whether she was trying to encourage teamwork or trying to turn them all against each other. Whatever the case, the group had been stuck in close confines for long periods of time before, and it had never ended well.

"Kryten, got any ideas?" he said, forcing his tone to remain level.

The mechanoid began to walk about a bit, fiddling with his own fingers.

"Well – no. None of us have the weapons she gave us. There must be a clue somewhere, we just have to look for it."

"Correction," Rimmer offered, holding up a finger. "I still have the tool she gave me. _My_ light bee is still festering in Lister's pocket somewhere on this ship. Hubble VI loaded me into one of her own before dumping me in that hellhole back there."

"Ah!" Kryten responded eagerly, throwing his hands up in delight. "It must be a significantly updated model! Sir, would you mind if I take a look?"

The hologram pretended to think for a moment. "Hm. Well, yes, actually. Yes, I would mind. Do you really think I'll let any of you ignoramuses anywhere _near_ it? All the more, if I try to turn off for more than a few seconds, she forces me back on again."

"Just tell us what it does, then," Lister encouraged exasperatedly.

Rimmer did just that. One moment, he was stood in front of Lister, the next, he had vanished with a loud _bzzzzt_ sound, reappearing several feet away in the corner of the room. He did it again, and again, the very definition of smarminess, but thankfully, that look was wiped straight off his face when he teleported straight into the wall and firmly bounced off into a heap on the floor. Slightly red-faced, he stood up and brushed himself off. Lister ignored the idiocy he had just witnessed on his friend's behalf.

"Right, then. Punch a hole in one of the walls and send your bee whizzing through it. Easy as puddin'."

The hologram turned his nose up at being ordered about. They had no other ideas, however, and so he stiffly turned his back on the others and approached the closest wall. He shook his hand, gathered it into a fist, and then slammed it with all the strength that he could muster – only for his limb to do absolutely no damage at all. His entire body shook with the force of the impact, and his fist remained flat against the pale blue wall, stuck there as his features contorted with pain.

" _Ow_ ," he eventually managed.

They tried everything. They tried using Kryten as a battering ram. They tried peeling up the carpet to see if there were any trapdoors. They tried moving every ornament, every painting to see if there was a secret lever or button, but nothing worked. The room was rock solid and innocent of treachery, and as the hours passed, the group became more and more frustrated both with it and each other. It got to the point that they all ceased communicating and instead resorted to sitting about uselessly, hoping that their stupid predicament would miraculously come to an end.

Lister started to hate the room and everything in it. He would have preferred a jail cell to this mockery of a dentist's waiting room. It constantly made him feel on edge, like somebody was about to summon him and stick a needle into his gums. At least real waiting rooms had lollipops and old wooden toys meant to distract children from the oncoming trauma. If he had to read one more article on the best brand of flat cap, he was going to go insane.

Tossing the golfing magazine inside, he leaned back in his armchair and began gnawing on a hangnail, watching the others. Cat was circled tightly up on the other chair. Kryten was inspecting the mock fireplace and getting himself very dusty. Rimmer, to his surprise, was staring straight back at him with an odd expression.

Lister was instantly taken back to the moment he had messed up in the volcanic tunnel. Rimmer had looked at him similarly, then, like he was a piece of old gum stuck to his shoe. He wouldn't have minded, usually, because he was entirely used to being looked at like that, but in his increasingly frazzled state, it was swiftly starting to grate on his nerves.

"Arnold, keep lookin' at me like I'm scum and I'm gonna bring back yesterday's beans on toast, and there's no fans in here you can waft it away with."

The hologram's eyebrows did an angry little dance. "This is an enclosed space, you foul cretin. You wouldn't _dare_."

"Make me not dare, smeghead."

Furious, the two men got to their feet and squared off like a couple of cowboys, each daring the other to make a move. All Lister had to do was twitch, and Rimmer was _fzzzz_ ting over to him in a rage, preparing to throttle the equally angry Liverpudlian, but instead found himself in a headlock as Lister began scrubbing violently on his head with his knuckles.

"Say that you'll stop and I'll let yeh go!"

"Ow!" Rimmer whined, forgetting in his shock that he was more than capable of escaping the callous grip of his companion. "I'll never say it! Let me go, you disgusting amalgamation of dried sewage!"

Their pathetic scuffle lasted a moment or two, during which Kryten worriedly watched them, attempting every now and then to pry the two bickering men apart.

"Sirs, please! I have a theory that might be of interest," the mechanoid said loudly, batting Lister's arm until he relinquished his hold around Rimmer's neck. Once they were apart and sulking, Kryten offered one of his odd little smiles. "I believe that this room is a mere hard-light simulation, much like the others. Our individual subconsciousness dictated what we saw and experienced in those rooms. There's little to suggest that this is any different."

"So how to we get out of here, Krytes?" Lister pushed, agitatedly beckoning for an answer.

"This is really just a guess, sir, but this chamber may be indicative of a person's mental state. Somebody who feels trapped, or like they are waiting for something that isn't coming. If such is the case, the only way out is for that person to feel as if their problem is somewhat resolved. I believe the challenge is to find something of a metaphorical escape."

"What are you drivelling about?" Rimmer blurted out, shaking his head. "Nonsense, as usual. Listen, that dratted computer needs our help. She can't dispatch of the GELFs on her own, or she wouldn't have made a deal in the first place. She isn't going to leave us in here. Enough with the wishy-washy psycho-babble."

"Not unless this research chamber is time-locked. I wouldn't put it past her capabilities. Several hours for us may be a split second outside. It could be why she hasn't attempted communication since we have been in here. Now, Mister Cat is content with his lot and lacks the capability to aspire for more – no offence intended, of course -"

Cat wasn't even listening, having since succumbed to one of his regular cat-naps, snoring softly and smiling as he dreamt of whatever cats dreamt about.

"- and I, being a service droid, am also content with my duties and lifestyle. Our current predicament resonates most strongly with the two of you, I feel."

Unsure what else to do, Lister just laughed. "We're all in the same boat, man. We've all got the same problems. It's all of us! Nobody wants to be stuck floatin' in space until the bitter end, even robots and cats."

"Pardon me, but it hasn't escaped my notice that the both of you have been decidedly … _off_ , as they say. Mister Lister, this is the first time I have seen you stone cold sober for weeks, now. And Mister Rimmer, sir, I never thought you capable of wearing a knitted garment, let alone making them yourself. I'm just going to shut down for a while and give you two some privacy. It would be excellent if you could refrain from murdering each other while I attempt to conserve power."

"Don't leave me alone with this _smegger_ ," Lister and Rimmer said in unison, both of them taking an insistent step forwards.

Deaf to the world, Kryten sat himself down in one of the armchairs and initiated his power off sequence. Seconds later, he remained perfectly still and unresponsive, betraying his bunkmates by subjecting them to each other's company alone.

There was no attempt at resolving their problems – at least not straight away. In fact, the two men settled with simply ignoring each other for a good long time. Both of them were jaded, bitter, and confused, and neither of them were particularly good at putting their feelings into words, especially when Kryten had theorised it was the only way they were going to free themselves from their prison. Nobody could talk about their issues on the spot, could they? They weren't good talkers, and they weren't often good listeners, either.

Lister did what he could to stop himself from going mad. Refusing to look at the four walls encasing them, he hid his face in his hands and imagined that he was on a hot beach somewhere tropical. He had a cocktail in a coconut, suncream, and all the time in the world. A long out-dated vision of paradise, but one he clung to whenever there was nothing else present to stop him from crumbling into an incapable mess.

Cat and Kryten were there, soaking in the sunlight. Rimmer was fumbling with a disposable barbecue and burning all the food. Since when had he started incorporating those three into his Fiji plans?

Envisioning the picturesque landscape served to help him feel better only for a short time. As the minutes passed, he started to feel sick. Endless oceans and shimmering shoals of fish were replaced by a pale blue carpet and walls. His eyes flitted to Rimmer, who was sat against the wall with his knees drawn up to his chest and a thoroughly blank expression. His chest was moving quickly, in and out, and Lister felt reluctant surges of pity and regret. Not everybody had a Fiji to think about.

Summoning whatever courage he could muster, he quietly moved over to his bunkmate and sat down beside him, stretching his bad leg out in front of him with some relief. Once settled, he cautiously put his hand on Rimmer's back and gently urged him to lean forwards a little, giving it a few short rubs. Whatever anger he still felt, he simply pushed it to the back of his mind until he would need it again. For both their sakes, he couldn't carry on trying to argue or wind the other guy up, not until they were actually safe enough to do so without consequences.

The hologram's panicked intakes of breath gradually steadied. His head drooped and eventually flopped onto his knees.

"Better?" Lister murmured, patiently waiting for his friend to recover. He observed the tiniest of embarrassed nods. "Aight, let's think about somethin' else for a sec. Uh … Right, what was the best day of your life?"

Rimmer didn't look up, and didn't answer, either. Unshaken, Lister continued:

"Mine happened when I was eighteen. It was some time in December and it was snowin'. The heart of Liverpool was just buzzin', like, 'cause there was some Christmas fair goin' on. There was some bloke playin' the bagpipes real bad, and the streets were lit by nothin' but lanterns and little candles kids were holdin'. I had no money, no job, but I stood on a street corner with me mates, and we all had a jacket potato with extra beans and cheese. It was beautiful, man. I remember it just hittin' me, y'know? The best thing about humanity is how we work together to make beautiful things. Nothin' special happened that night, but it inspired me. I realised I'm so lucky to be alive and that I should live each day how I want, with who I want."

"Things never work out like that, Listy," Rimmer replied bluntly, his voice muffled. He made no attempt to stop the Scouser from rubbing his back, likely silently enjoying the attention, so Lister made no effort to stop.

"Nah. Not often," Lister agreed quietly. "Sometimes they do, though. Sometimes you gotta work on it. Other times, it's like … you don't realise you had somethin' good until it's gone. That you were the lucky one all along."

The hologram slowly raised his head. His face was lined with a slight sneer. Still, he remained where he was, a slight curiosity flickering in his eyes despite his apparent reluctance to show it. What he likely didn't expect was to receive a smacker of a kiss on his cheek, a chummy gesture on behalf of Lister, who grinned like he always did whenever he had surprised the likes of Peterson and the others with sloppy acts of affection.

Rimmer rubbed the wetness from his cheek with his sleeve, his expression quickly turning truly diabolical.

"I've never had a day like that," he said bitterly, nose turned up in the air with acute disgust. "I've never had a _best_ day."

"Never?"

"That's right. Oh, it's a load of old nonsense, anyway. Life is meant to be miserable from the day you're born to the day you kick the bucket, isn't it? For the likes of us, I mean."

"You're a right Eeyore." Finding himself getting caught in the moment and in their closeness, Lister smirked again and turned his body to face the other man, bringing a hand to the hologram's warm cheek. "Oi. Look at me."

He was heeded with painful amounts of reluctance, but heeded nonetheless. Rimmer's eyes were angry – but Lister wasn't deterred, because that was the norm. Instead of shrinking away from that odious glare, he forced himself to relax, and stroked along the man's cheekbone with his thumb.

Regret wasn't factoring quite yet. He hoped it wouldn't.

"What I said in that tunnel – I meant it, man."

His own breath came in short spurts. Adrenaline was pumping, like he had just run three miles without stopping. His heart was thumping so quickly and with such vigour he almost felt faint with it. It was ridiculous, really, because they were a mismatched pair, only existing together out of necessity, but Lister had long come to expect the unexpected. He wasn't one for dwelling, either. Not really. Unlike the drinking and persistent lazing around, what he was doing now felt right.

It was better than right, actually. He probably wouldn't ever understand what had changed between them, but he wasn't about to reject it, either.

"I'll give you a best day, one day. I swear on me life."

Rimmer was frozen in place, his hands tightly clinging to his knees. His lower lip twitched. Lister took the opportunity to move his thumb over it, slowly and with amatory drive. Any anger he still felt towards the guy seemed to be culminating into something else entirely, and all he wanted was for Rimmer to understand.

"Can I …?" he purred, leaning in. For a moment, he was actually stupid enough to believe that he was getting anywhere.

Any attempts to entice fell flat. The technician found himself kissing mid-air, because his bunkmate was leaning away from him as far as he could go.

"Lister," Rimmer said stiffly, and he nervously wet his lips. "You're about as smooth as a hedgehog with psoriasis. Would you like a list of the things I would rather do than endure one of your slobbery canoodles again? Most of them involve a cheese grater."

With a sallow frown, Lister pulled back and removed his hands from his bunkmate's person.

"There's really nothin' there for you?"

A pause. With a hopeful glance in Rimmer's direction, he was aghast to find a man who was obviously extremely miserable – and for once, not in the bad-tempered kind of way. Though it was fleeting, there was a genuine melancholy, like poor Rimmer had witnessed something terrible that was haunting him like a ghost.

Lister was sure he had never seen anybody looking quite so sad. He didn't dare ask.

"It's wrong, Listy."

"It ain't, though, is it? I've told yeh what a smeghead your dad was -"

"I don't mean – I don't mean wrong like that. I meant – Well, for us it wouldn't be – We just _can't_."

The pain of rejection was so severe that it almost felt like it was a physical ailment. Completely dejected, Lister leaned back against the wall and ran a hand over his hair, fighting to hide the disappointment that threatened to swallow him whole. Suddenly, lying down and never waking up ever again seemed to be a very good idea, but he knew, now more than ever, that simply giving up on his friends wasn't an option.

He'd at least wait until they were back on the Dwarf before going back to mindlessly spending his hours in bed.

"Okay, man," he accepted, giving his crewmate's arm a brief pat. "I'm sorry. Whatever you want."

They lapsed into an awkward silence. There was little else to be said, really, and it was more than evident that Rimmer didn't want the subject matter to persist. Losing the will to even focus on getting them out of the damned room they were stuck in, Lister slumped back and agitatedly twiddled his thumbs a bit, swallowing down the bitter sadness that was tugging painfully at his heart.

He felt an awful mixture of embarrassed, sad, and confused. Most of all, he felt lonely, because there was nobody else in the Universe who could understand. Not any more.

* * *

"What do you get when you put a human, a hologram, a service droid, and a _felis sapien_ together in one room?"

Lister and Cat jerked awake. Rimmer continued tightly wringing his hands. Kryten, of course, was still dead to the world. It was Hubble VI who had spoken.

At last! Lister scrambled to his feet and limped over to one of the walls, holding onto it almost reverently in his desire to be freed from the incredibly stressful space that had been cruelly locked in for the past several hours.

"What? What do you get? Smeg, I need the bog! I need food!"

"The pinnacle of absolute stupidity, that's what," Hubble replied, her bodiless voice filled with something that sounded awfully like _amusement_. "You're not in a research chamber. I moved you all into a recreation room within reach of the sleeping quarters. Doors fell out of fashion in the late 27th Century, you know. It was quite the scandal for an officer to be seen opening one manually. Use voice commands!"

"Wha'?" Lister grunted, dread seeping into his gut. "Why didn't you say somethin'?!"

"From a scientific standpoint, witnessing idiocy on such levels was rather fascinating. You don't have a brain cell between you, do you? _Open_."

A door that had previously been seamlessly integrated into one of the blue walls slid open.

The three men wearily looked at each other. No comments were made. None of them were quite ready to talk about the fact the solution had been so simple the whole time, and that Kryten's theory, though well meant, had blown things slightly out of proportion. Once the mechanoid was awakened and informed of the shameful resolution, the group silently shuffled into the corridor beyond.

Lister cursed himself over and over. He really was a total smeghead, wasn't he? His brain was literally composed of worthless _smeg_. He had been so focused on other things that he had failed to use logic appropriately - not that he had much to spare in the first place. However, he felt significantly less bad about being so stupid than he did about making uninvited advances on somebody who hated him. That was a different kind of stupidity and arguably worse than the other.

The group wordlessly found the sleeping quarters Hubble VI had mentioned. They were pristine; white all over, shining, and boasting technology more advanced than that of Red Dwarf. Likely meant for Space Corps officers, once upon a time, each room didn't have bunks but king-sized beds, instead. The four men filtered off into separate rooms, all of them so incredibly irritated with each other and themselves that they still didn't bother communicating. Even Cat, who was usually set in a permanent state of uncaring, seemed rattled.

Lister immediately didn't like the silence of his room. The space was too big, too clean. It wasn't him, and he wasn't meant to be by himself. When was the last time he had slept alone?

After taking a much needed visit to the bog, he kicked off his boots and laid down somewhat awkwardly on the made bed. Hubble VI _fwooshed_ onto the television panel on the wall opposite. Seeing her face was really the last thing he needed, because he was, surprisingly, somewhat resentful of the fact she had allowed their idiocy, which had thus resulted in him behaving like a total _gimp._

"It's not normal, you know," she said brazenly. "It's like falling for a photograph of somebody. It's not them, is it? It's just a memory."

Immediately annoyed, Lister ran his hands down his face.

"You're wrong. Photographs can't learn or change or talk."

"They could when the light bee was invented. Not only is he a mere simulation, he is also insufferable. For the first time ever, I am truly perplexed."

"Well, you wouldn't understand, would yeh? Yeh've never felt it. It's not meant to be understood. It just happens." Lister rolled over and curled into a ball, hugging the clean, white sheets to his chest. "There's more to him than yeh think. There's more to all of us. You're just used to the rugged astro type. We ain't that and we're not gonna try and be that."

"I'm not going to change my terms, David Lister. Starbug gets fixed if you get rid of my parasite problem. Training will begin again when you all stop moping around."

His irritation reaching breaking point, he grabbed one of the pillows and flung it at the TV screen.

"I'm not helpin'! We don't need your twisted idea of trainin', either! Everythin' we've done - we've done it without help. We've done it on our own. We don't need yeh tellin' us what to do, we don't need your smeggin' weapons. All I wanna do right now is sleep, so bugger right off!"

Hubble VI's face vanished from the screen. At the same time, the lights in the room dimmed, granting Lister some relief from the blinding brightness of everything. With an infuriated groan, he thrust himself face down into the sheets and gathered them about his head, truly agonised and angry beyond belief.

He dreamt of booze. Guitars. Gigs he had back in his home town. He dreamt of Christmas fairs and candlelight, potatoes and beans.

He dreamt of fields of white lilies. They reached on and on, never ending, and he was sure he could walk forever and never see the other side.

But he wouldn't walk forever. He was only human.

One day, his ticking clock was going to stop.


	4. It Wasn't Always So Ace

Nobody could pretend that they understood just how reality worked.

The Universe was like a growing tree. There was the original, which acted as the trunk, and the alternate dimensions were the various branches. There were an infinite number of these dimensions, for every time something happened, however small, there was a dimension where it didn't occur, or it happened differently. There were an infinite number of the same person, and this person could become a hundred million different things, depending on the choices they made.

There was one man who could travel willingly between these dimensions. With his trusty ship, the _Wildfire_ , he scoured the branches of the Multiverse and saved civilisations from the dangers that roamed the stars.

But no man could live forever. As his candle burnt out, he would always pass on the flame to another one of the infinite numbers of himself that existed.

As he sat dying in the wreckage of his ship, he contemplated that fact rather sullenly. A sudden death was Ace Rimmer's one true enemy, because it meant he wouldn't be able to inform or train his chosen Arnold, and the magnificent legacy he had been gifted with would die out. The brightly burning chain of heroes would break and he would be the idiot responsible. He should've known that _he_ would be the one to mess everything up.

Since arriving in this particular dimension, he had saved the moon called Europa from a barrage of simulant warships. He had been shot at, pulverised, and flipped off more times than he could count. He had even engaged their leader in fisticuffs at one point, distracting him by claiming hologrammatic superiority. Simulants, of course, thought themselves the very pinnacle of technology.

Though he successfully managed to disrupt the simulant's motherboard by forcing a screwdriver up one of his nostrils, it meant that he too was vulnerable, and he received a direct shot from a bazookoid on his flank. His hard-light form was supposed to be indestructible, but the area his light bee floated in proved to be a weak spot, as any sudden force exerted could easily damage the fragile device within.

He managed to escape by diving down a rubbish chute, but it was too late. He knew it as he fled in the _Wildfire_. He knew it as he crash landed on the lush, green fields of Europa. Reaching inside himself, he felt wires and screws meant to be keeping his light bee functioning crumble away. Though he had saved Europa from the tyranny of the simulant known as KILL-3R, he had failed the rest of the Multiverse by never finding a Rimmer to replace him.

This dimension did have one gift to give him, however.

Sunlight hit his face as the cockpit was opened to reveal a round-faced, short individual.

Lister. Of course it was. He always ran into them because Rimmers and Listers were often found together. It was a phenomenon he couldn't explain, and he didn't particularly want to understand it.

If he had happened upon a Lister here, it meant there was a good chance the next Ace was somewhere on Europa, too.

"Bloody hell. You all right, man?" came that familiar Liverpudlian drawl.

 _Do I bloody look bloody all right?_ Ace wanted to say back, but he held his tongue, instead attempting to shift out of the smoking remnants of his ship. Agony flared in his midriff. With a wince made as handsome as possible, he grabbed his torso and rode out the series of distortions that flickered across his form.

"Am I glad to see you, Davey-boy," he managed, flicking his sweaty golden hair out of his eyes. It was proving difficult to keep his voice low and suave with the amount of damage done, but he understood the importance of keeping up his heroic façade. "Just got into a bit of a tiff with that simulant gent."

"Yeah, can tell!" Lister replied, clearly in a state of disbelief. After pressing his deerstalker firmly down onto his head, he reached down into the cockpit and looped his arms around Ace's body to give him a helping hand. "Man, was lucky yeh crashed here! I'm a professor of robotics at Europa Uni. I can fix your bee. Me house is just down that path. Can yeh walk, mate? And how'd yeh know my name?"

Ace allowed himself to be pulled into the sunny meadow beyond. Balancing shakily against the hull of the _Wildfire_ , he met this new Lister's eyes and observed the usual expression of shock that befell most people who knew a Rimmer.

Lister blinked twice, then rubbed his eyes.

"God. Arnie? Is that you?!" he asked with evident hope.

Well, that was new. Ace was far more used to first being acknowledged with varying degrees of disgust or reluctance. For somebody to actually be pleased to recognise him was certainly more confusing than anything else. With an apologetic frown, he shook his head.

"My ship's a dimension-jumper. What do you say we take a walk back to your house, skipper? I'll tell you everything."

So he did. He explained the somewhat confusing fact that he was Arnold Rimmer but him as he existed in a different dimension. He tried to explain the Multiverse as best he could, and Lister proved an avid listener. He explained the Ace legacy and that he was searching for the next Arnold to take his place before he died.

By the time he was done, they were inside Dave Lister's home. It was an idyllic little place that didn't seem to suit him that well, because it was far too pretty and isolated, like a fairytale cottage on the edge of a forest. Ace supposed it probably belonged to this Lister's family at some point, and didn't dwell much on his surroundings, because the fact he was close to dying was rather more important.

The Scouser fell oddly quiet as he produced various tools from a cluttered cupboard in the corner of the small, homely kitchen. With a sigh, he sat backwards on one of the dinner chairs and fiddled with a load of tangled up wires until he found one of the ends. Once everything was a bit more orderly, he held up the plug on the end of the wire and flopped it about a bit.

"I'm gonna connect you to a battery pack. A bit of charge'll really help you out. Then you can safely turn off and I can take a look at your bee. Good with you?"

Taking the plug end, Ace guided it inside himself and blindly searched for the outlet on the bottom of his bee. The sudden surge of electricity into the device certainly made him feel better, but he was by no means fixed, and he doubted whether any Lister was actually competent enough to fully fix a hard-light hologram. Still, he had little choice but to trust that the man had some idea what he was doing.

The fact he was a professor was pretty impressive, after all.

Some hours later, Ace woke up to find himself prone in an unfamiliar bed. He was still sore and his projection still had a tendency to break image, but it was better than it was before. It was fine, he supposed, because he wasn't expecting to come out of the situation alive. He never had the kind of luck that meant he would survive and find his replacement.

Spotting movement in the bleary corner of his eye, he weakly turned his head to find the new Lister sat beside the king-sized bed, watching him with a highly concerned expression. There was something else there on his face, too, something which Ace couldn't put his finger on, but the professor seemed to be engulfed with melancholy. It almost hurt to look into his eyes, like doing it for any longer meant that Ace would feel that very same pain.

"Thanks, skipper," he said, feeling down his golden flight suit to make sure he was still in one piece. "Looks like you've given me a few more days. You're a bright spark, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Lister said quietly, managing a small but pleased grin. "No worries. Er, I've actually installed a contained unit of nano-bots into your bee. They'll repair it, but it's gonna take a week or two. Hard-light drives are more complicated than I thought. I've been tryin' to build one, y'see. I can hardly build a soft-light one, actually, but I'm savin' up to buy one."

Wondering why the man was anxiously wringing his hands between his legs, Ace wearily allowed his head to fall back onto the pillow. After a long series of missions and fights, he was as tired as his synthetic body would allow, and even if the nano-bots successfully fixed his bee, he wasn't entirely sure if he would be able to go back to doing his job.

The missions terrified him. They exhausted him. He had saved countless lives without expecting gratitude in return, because that's what being Ace meant. Something inside him told him that it was time to pass the torch on to fresh blood, because he had given all he could and all he really wanted was to find a place that he could call home and live out the rest of his life, if it could even be called that. He had achieved his dream of becoming a hero but now it was time to stop.

He had learnt that there was more to life than glory. After years of being fixated on success, he now knew that there were other things he needed, too. It would always be difficult to shift that all-consuming desire for power, of course, but he was different now. Older, and hopefully a bit wiser.

Lister cleared his throat and ended the short silence.

"So, er, what's your Dave like?"

Ace's eyes fell upon a framed photograph on the bedside table. It featured both of them, Dave and Arnold, in front of a spectacular Ionian sunset. They were dressed for hiking and were grinning from ear to ear. They must have been good friends in this dimension, then, which partly explained Lister's hopeful expression upon finding Ace in the cockpit.

 _He's a total smegging bum. He thinks he's a rockstar but he isn't, he just slobs about all day and does nothing but talk about all the things he's going to do in the future, but the future never comes. He's a total, total smeghead._

"He's like you, Sparky. Brighter than ten-thousand supernovas exploding together in one enormous … explosion. More importantly, he's stronger and braver than any man I've ever met."

 _He showers once a month and has bunions the size of Olympus Mons. He's a pig-headed man-boy with all the finesse of an orangutan on rollerskates. I've never wanted to punch somebody in the face so much in my entire life._

"I don't know what I would have done without him," Ace continued, still looking at the photograph to his side. "Any chance you could get hold of your Rimmer for me? I need to have a word. It's about time I met the ol' bastard. He's got several days of training ahead of him, and I'll need him to help me fix the _Wildfire_ , too."

Lister stopped wringing his hands and visibly tensed. The melancholy about him suddenly seemed to swallow him whole, and with a hard gulp, the Scouser leaned forwards and turned his gaze to the floor.

"I can't."

"Right. No rush, Sparky, but I'll need this one last favour from you," Ace pressed, stifling his impatience. "See, he's bound for the legacy and it's my job to -"

"No, I mean I _can't_ , Ace. He died a few weeks ago."

A horrible silence ensued.

Damn it all. That meant Ace was supposed to stay here until both he and his ship were fixed, and then he'd have to go traipsing back all over the Multiverse until he found a suitable Rimmer to train up for the job. His concerns were swiftly dulled, however, when he saw that Lister's averted eyes had become somewhat moister than usual. The devastation the man felt was clearly fresh and Ace had only succeeded in upsetting him.

Pushing himself into a seated position, he reached over and placed a hand on Lister's shoulder.

"I'm sorry, old chap. You must have been very close friends."

Despite his upset, the professor actually smiled and issued a short spurt of laughter.

"Friends? It was more than that, man. We met on Mimas years ago and ended up becomin' bunkmates in a minin' ship called Red Dwarf. I got put into stasis for takin' a cat on board. He ended up getting put in there with me 'cause he kicked one of the officers in the shin for callin' him a smeghead. I quit and left once we got back to Earth, and so did he. We just kinda ended up livin' together for a bit while we got ourselves sorted out."

Unsure just what 'more than that' meant, Ace dared not ask, but his new friend seemed eager to tell his story.

"Arn ended up getting himself some pretty nice job here on Europa. He worked at the Space Corps Station in the next city along as a mechanic, and he liked it. Invited me up here to come see his new house and job and, uh, I just kinda ended up stayin'. This place was paradise. I got meself enrolled in the Uni and we went from there. Now I teach the stuff I'm good at." Lister paused and wiped one of his eyes with his scruffy sleeve. "There was a simulant attack on the Space Corps Station a few weeks ago. I think like twenty of 'em died, including Arn. Weird how somebody yeh love can just get taken from you without warnin', isn't it?"

It was then Ace realised the extent of the relationship between this dimension's Lister and Rimmer. It really was that. A _relationship_. He didn't know what to think or how to react, because there was a time he would have been completely repulsed by the idea, but right now he could see that the love shared between the pair had been just that.

Love. It was what a man was meant to feel for a woman, or so his father had warned him frequently. He had grown up believing that anything other than that was out of the norm. Men loving men was just plain weird and he had long learnt to disassociate himself from the subject.

But now a man loved _him_ – or at least a version of him. For a moment, all he could see was his father's terrifying expression of disgust and disappointment. The hateful nature that had been passed from father to son flared and it took all of Ace not to pull a face of utter repugnance.

He didn't feel repulsed. Not really. Something was telling him to feel that way, but it felt wrong because all he could see in front of him was a man who had lost somebody he loved. It felt wrong because love made people feel so good and everybody deserved a chance at it, didn't they? Love, lust, and grief knew no bounds, so why should it be so difficult to accept them?

"You loved him?" Ace asked, desiring the clarification more than anything else. He wanted to know that somebody had actually fallen for him. _Him_. That he had, in some form, shared a life with somebody else. A life that had made them both happy.

"Yeah," Lister murmured. "Yeh've got no idea what it's like havin' you in front of me now. It's like he's back. So bleedin' bittersweet, innit? Look, I'm gonna help you get your ship back up and runnin'. Yeh've scared off the ones responsible for killin' my Arn. It's the least I can do."

Any words Ace might have been able to speak immediately got caught in his throat. He wasn't entirely sure how he felt being looked at the way this dimension's Lister looked at him. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant feeling, after all, but all he wanted to do was reject it because things like this weren't meant to happen to him. His brain hated the idea. People weren't supposed to _love_ him. He was just a clueless, neurotic mess and he had no idea what this alternative version of him had that he didn't.

"Your Lister must be worried sick," the Scouser added, offering another endearing smile. "I guess he told you to go, right? I think my Arn would've liked to become Ace for a bit. Maybe he never got that chance, but I'm still mad proud of him. I really am."

The stab of pain in his chest had nothing to do with his light bee. It was something else entirely. Remorse, perhaps. Grief. Whatever it was, it caused a hard lump to form in Ace's throat, and he took a moment to collect himself before responding, trying hard to resume the smooth monotone that distanced him from Arnold Rimmer.

"Things never went as smoothly for us, Sparky. I made a lot of mistakes. I single-handedly ruined my Lister's chances of getting home to Earth. He'll never be happy and it's my fault."

Lister thankfully didn't push for the details. With a sad smile, he reached over and placed an affectionate hand on Ace's knee.

"Love's stronger than any of that, man."

Rimmer found himself agreeing. He had loved before, but only once, and he still had feelings for Nirvanah Crane to this day. He had done things for her he wouldn't have done for anybody else.

But he had made the worst of mistakes. He killed the entirety of the Red Dwarf crew. The fact it was an accident didn't make him feel any better. The truth was that he thought about it every minute of his life and he always would, because he was always fighting to diminish the sickening guilt he felt regarding the incident.

For anybody to love him would just be wrong. _Especially_ Lister.

Days turned into weeks. The repairing of his light bee didn't go as smoothly as planned, because nanobots were unpredictable and difficult to control. He spent hours in bed, in pain and mostly alone, and he found himself wishing that Kryten was there to give him some words of advice and some kind of sedative. As it was, Lister was either working or inviting his mates round to fix up the _Wildfire_ , which Ace was grateful for, certainly, but it meant that he was left to his own thoughts more often than he liked.

He often got the feeling that Lister was avoiding him, actually, which was fair enough. Ace had the face and body of a recently departed loved one. It made him feel like some kind of ghost, more so than he already did, and more than a little bit uncomfortable. Any time that he and Lister actually crossed paths, however, he still greeted the man good-naturedly and enquired after his well-being, because he wasn't Arnold any more.

When the day came he felt strong enough to venture outside, Ace walked back up to the crash site of his ship and was stunned to find it beautifully restored, all fitted back together and cleaned to within an inch of its life. Lister was there, sat on the back and whistling some inane tune as he worked on the engine, his hands and face smudged with dirt.

Cool as a cucumber, Ace approached and leaned on the side of the ship, giving it a fond slap.

"The old girl looks better than ever, Sparky."

Lister jumped and grabbed his chest, startled.

"Smeg! Yeh scared the bloody hell outta me!" he laughed, turning to slide down the side of the sleek vessel. Landing easily on his feet, he grinned and greeted Ace by punching him firmly in the arm. "You're lookin' better. I reckon a couple more days and you'll be ready to go back."

With a small, knowing smile, Ace lit a couple of cigarettes and offered one to his companion.

"I don't have a couple of days. There are planets in peril, Davey-boy, and I've been gone for too long. I need to get back out into the stars. Is the _Wildfire_ almost ready?"

"Ready as she's gonna be, mate," Lister responded wistfully, running a hand along the ship's smooth exterior. "I can't believe all this, y'know. Me partner is a space hero in another dimension. He would've been proper delighted if yeh'd asked him to take your place. Would've been tough for me to say goodbye, but at least I actually would've had a chance to say it. Yeh know?"

Ace nodded briefly, inhaling suavely from his cigarette. He tried valiantly not to cough his lungs up.

"You're a trooper."

"Me? Nah. Just doin' what I can," Lister murmured, shrugging loosely. "I don't think yeh should leave yet, though. I don't want yeh to go getting yehself all bashed up, aight? What do yeh say I take your place for a couple of days?"

Ace inhaled his cigarette. After pounding on his chest a few times, he expelled it and then swung to face Lister, dramatically flicking his fringe out of his eyes.

" _What?!"_ he barked in a tone that was suddenly far too Rimmer-like. Wincing, he fought the urge to speak his thoughts and remind the Scouser just how much of an idiot he was, because not only did he have to consciously be a thoroughly amiable individual while in the golden flight suit, Lister was watching him with such an expression of hope that even the most foul-hearted man couldn't have let him down harshly. "I'm sorry, ol' chum, but it's too dangerous out there."

The response was another calm shrug.

"Yeah, but I'll come back. Swear on me life. I wanna do it to help yeh out, but I wanna do it for him, too. I feel like everythin' was my fault. If I hadn't convinced him to quit the Dwarf with me, he wouldn't have died."

It was almost amusing to hear that. How many times had Rimmer died in his own Universe, again? An embarrassing amount, to put it bluntly. Instead of vocalising that and encouraging further shame, however, he simply gestured down at his hologrammatic body and raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"Not true. You prevented a big mistake. Don't end up like me, skipper. Death wouldn't suit you."

"Yeah. That's why I'm not gonna die, innit? I wanna see all the things he would've seen. I wanna see everythin' _you've_ seen. I'm gonna get back into space and save some maidens, 'cause Listers can be heroes, too."

Both entranced and mortified, Ace stood back and watched as a gleeful Lister pulled himself up into the _Wildfire_ 's cockpit. The man appeared quite content as he slipped into the leather seat and buckled himself in, using the dashboard controls like he had already spent hours studying them in preparation for his mission. With a goofy smile and a salute towards Ace that was somehow both mocking and affectionate, he then gave him a thumbs up and a wave, cigarette still hanging from his lips.

"I'll be back in no time! I promise!"

If there was an admirable trait among all the Listers he had met, it was their perseverance. Others might have called it stubbornness, and perhaps it could often seep into that territory, but Ace found himself convinced that there was nothing to worry about. This Lister, a heartbroken professor who had defied society's expectations, deserved another adventure to finally lay the memory of a loved one to rest.

The _Wildfire_ hummed into motion and vanished in a powerful wave of energy. Ace was almost knocked off his feet. Catching himself on the trunk of a tree, he stared blankly at the spot his precious ship had been mere moments ago.

He could only hope that Lister didn't end up getting himself completely and utterly splattered, because Ace had a sudden and painful longing for home.

* * *

And so we head back to the present and into further complications.

"Lister."

The night had been rife with dreams. It wasn't the first time he had heard his name being called. In Lister's mind, his name had been uttered gently and almost reverently. He smiled cluelessly and reached out and sought the person who had said it, hand sliding along the smooth, white sheets.

" _Lister._ "

Oh. It was the loudest and clearest it had been yet. He didn't want to open his eyes, because he had the loveliest image of Rimmer in his head: the man beside him in bed, slowly awakening to the coming day. It was a sight so pure that Lister cherished it, and in his deceitfully pleasant dream, he leaned over and greeted his bunkmate with a few small kisses to his cheek.

"You're bloody gorgeous," he said, unaware that he had also spoken those words into reality.

"LISTER, WAKE UP YOU SEWAGE-COATED RODENT! I'M GOING TO STRING YOU UP BY YOUR OWN NOSTRIL HAIRS!"

Right. There was nothing pure about Rimmer, was there? Dreams could only last so long.

Lister jerked awake with a final, loud snore and looked up at the blurry white mass beside his bed. After rubbing his eyes, he blearily focused on the other man and saw that the hologram was no longer wearing a green jumpsuit, but a white officer's uniform, instead. The JMC name badge on his chest had been replaced with what looked like a golden descendant of the NASA symbol.

He looked good in white. Very good, in fact, but Lister was as equally disgusted as he was intrigued by the uniform. If Rimmer was wearing it, it meant Hubble VI had employed him as one of her holograms, no doubt toying with the man's desire to achieve a higher rank. Something, no doubt, was afoot.

With a weary sigh, Lister sat up and rubbed his eyes again, hoping that he was still dreaming.

"I'm glad you've finally decided to grace me with alertness, Listy. Do you know how long I've been trying to wake you up? And all the while, I've been forced to listen to your monstrous snoring. I thought the end had come – it was like bearing witness to the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse, but instead of robed ghouls it was a band of bulldogs with particularly nasty colds."

"You act like you haven't been sharin' a room with me for most of yeh life!"

"I prefer to use the term _enduring._ "

With an irritated grunt, Lister threw himself back down and tugged the sheets tightly around his body, glaring up at his bunkmate with all the resentment that he could muster.

"What do yeh want? What's with the get-up, eh?"

Rimmer moved his hands behind his back and puffed out his chest – a display that Lister knew full well signalled anxiety more than it did confidence. Regardless, the hologram seemed mightily pleased with himself, appearing every bit like the cat that had got the cream. It was never a good sign. Rather, it was an indicator that something bad had or was going to happen very soon.

"She wanted to test you all again, Listy, but I've managed to change her mind. She wanted to test you and test you until you had no choice but to do what she wants. Luckily for you, good ol' Rimsy is here to save the day, as per usual," the man said smoothly, his countenance entirely self-righteous. "I'll be the one to get us all home, and this time, I'm not going to mess it up. No sir-ee! If you pipsqueaks can't bring yourselves to eradicate a mass of parasitic monsters, then it looks like I have no choice but to do it myself."

Oh, god.

Oh, _god_. This wasn't really happening, was it?

"No. _No_ , Rimmer! You can't!" Lister moaned, hands clenching tightly into his sheets. Rimmer looked mightily offended at that, eyebrows raising with incredulity.

"What do you mean I can't? Of course I can. I learnt a thing or two from our last disastrous mission, you know. I was hampered by the others. You know what they say: if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. I _need_ to do this, Lister."

"No, I mean – You don't need to do anythin' of the sort, man! You're not thinkin' straight."

He always knew when he had said the wrong thing. He usually knew before he had even finished his sentence. The look he was given could have melted through a vindaloo sandwich like stomach acid, but Lister had long learnt to meet such glares dead-on and give the guy a run for his money. Rimmer was always the first to look away. Now was no exception, and the hologram glanced back down at his shining, black shoes briefly, one of his eyelids twitching with displeasure.

" _I'm_ not thinking straight? Apparently, I'm the only one here capable of any sort of reason. While you're playing hippy and setting up your protest against the so-called oppression of brainless space jellyfish, I'll be the one getting us back home to the Dwarf. If you want to be left here, be my guest. Maybe they'll invite you to feast with their queen. If you're fortunate, they might just save you for dessert, and in your last moments, all you will be able to think of is me and how I was right all along."

"Right? The only reason you're doin' this is 'cause of yeh messed up need to prove yehself or whatever it was yeh said before. Look, I expect better of you, Arn. I don't want you to go," Lister retorted.

Now, he had seen his bunkmate angry many times before. He had seen him wrench fridges off of walls. He had seen him punch fists straight through walls and whatever else. He had watched him become so mad at the Peter Rabbit themed puzzle they had been trying to piece together for weeks that the parts became firmly lodged in just about everything within the vicinity of their room. The type of anger he witnessed now, however, was entirely different. Rimmer was evidently trying to restrain himself, hands balling into fists, and his face temporarily turned a horrific shade of purple.

Lister brought his blankets up closer around his head, peeping up at his friend warily.

"You -" Rimmer managed. He was cut off by a glitch that saw him vanish and reappear about a foot to the right. Unfazed, he shook his head and then turned away, moving his hands up to his face. "It always comes down to what you want, doesn't it? There comes a problem with that, Lister: you're a total bloody mess. You know what you want as much as I do."

"What the smeg are you talkin' about?" Lister dared ask, staring at the hologram's back.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I really don't. Nothing I do is right, is it? I can't be nice, I can't be awful. I can't sit back and do nothing, and I can't stand up and do _something_. I'm never really going to be good enough, am I? How am I supposed to give you what you want when you don't even know what that is? Well, I've had quite enough of concerning myself with somebody who is quick to accuse _me_ of not thinking straight."

Having the decency to be somewhat ashamed by those words, Lister sat up and scooted across the bed on his bum in an attempt to get closer to his friend.

"Look, you're right."

"What? I didn't quite catch that. What's that _thing_ agreeable individuals do when they've done something wrong?"

Lister pulled a face and drew his knees up to his chest. " _Sorry_. Look, Rimmer, I just haven't been feelin' all that great lately. In me head, like. I know I've taken it out on you. It's just -"

"The future. I know, Listy."

"Not just that."

With a hard swallow, he dared to reach out and take the other man's hand. Rimmer twitched slightly, but didn't pull away, his eyebrows furrowing in a mixture of confusion and curiosity as Lister began to fiddle with his fingers and thoughtfully draw shapes into his skin. The hologram eventually decided to sit down on the edge of the bed, silently allowing the Scouser to resume whatever it was he was doing.

"Hubble VI is maintaining life support systems because you're here. What makes you think she'll waste energy keeping it on if she decides you're useless? Lister, we're decidedly more important than the load of slimy, mutant leeches attached to the planet surface. Nobody's going to miss a race of monsters, are they? But they might miss the last human alive. Even if he does look something like you'd find in the bottom of a unkept pond himself."

Despite everything, Lister found himself smirking. He nudged Rimmer's shoulder.

"You sayin' you'd miss me, smeghead?"

"Absolutely not. Kryten would. Maybe Cat. Did you not listen to a word I just said? You might _die_ , Lister. And for what? Some sludgey things to continue sludging around until they've devoured this entire planet? I know you have a distinct lack of good sense, but do try just this once not to lob yourself into danger like a total goit."

It was typical, wasn't it? Rimmer was vying to make one of the biggest mistakes of his life, but it was coming from a good place. That didn't make it _right_ , of course, but it made Lister all the more conflicted. Apparently, there wasn't anything that was going to stop him from feeling the way he was feeling. All he could do was reluctantly accept it and hope that maybe his bunkmate would see sense and refuse to go along with Hubble's demands.

"Don't go anywhere, man. Let's just stay here and think of a plan. We can't just go off on our own. What are you gonna do once you find the GELFs? Try and shoot them all or summat? What if there's thousands of them and just one of you?"

Rimmer averted his gaze and shifted uncomfortably, removing his hand from the other man's hold to bring it between his knees.

"Hubble has it under control. Look, enough namby-pamby. The sooner I get this done, the sooner we'll be back scavenging derelicts and mistaking dangerous creatures for damsels in distress -"

"You're not goin' anywhere!" Lister snapped, angrily thrusting himself off the bed into a standing position. Rimmer did the same, trying to use his height to impress a kind of authority, but Lister did what he usually did and squared up to him defiantly. "We almost lost you on that smeggin' ship a few days ago. And it was your own fault!"

"Which is exactly why I'm not messing this up, Lister! I'm doing this for me as much as I am _you_."

"You're just gonna end up regrettin' it, like you end up regrettin' all the stupid things yeh do!"

He stumbled when the hologram gave him a slight shove. Rimmer certainly hadn't put all his strength behind it, but it was enough to agitate Lister further. Without hesitation, he pushed Rimmer hard in the chest, but pushing a hard-light was like trying to push over an immovable tree or other solid object. He only ended up stumbling backwards again.

"Stop telling me what to do, Lister. _I'm_ your commanding officer! Not you!"

"A boil on a dog's arse would do a better job at bein' an officer! Stop bein' a smeghead!"

" _You_ stop. You're always telling me what to do or how to act or how to _think_. You're always trying to turn me into your ideals, like it's going to make you feel better about the fact I'm the only one around who could possibly return any affections you're wanting to fling about -"

Wounded, Lister attempted to shove his bunkmate again. Their arguments hadn't always been so physical, but he was so frustrated, so _angry_ , even he couldn't think of a better way to unleash it.

"Well, you're entirely misguided, Listy!" Rimmer continued snidely, grabbing hold of the Scouser's wrists to prevent any more attempts to knock him over. "I've been looking out for you from the moment we met!"

"What a load of smeg!"

"It's true! And even now I'm dead, all I seem to be doing is cleaning up after your horrendous hangovers and making sure you don't get yourself slaughtered by simulants or whatever else. I was brought back to keep you from going mad, and so far, I think I've done a bloody good job!"

Trying to yank his fists free, Lister glared scorchingly up at the hologram with all the venom he could muster.

"Well, you're wrong! I've gone bloody mad! Bonkers! No one in their right mind would look twice at you, would they?! You're a worse pain than severe indigestion!You're a snivellin' little -"

"You're a petulant -"

"Cowardly -"

"Kebab-breathed -"

"Rat-faced -"

" _Git_."

"Bum 'ole!"

Roughly releasing Lister's wrists, Rimmer turned his nose up and marched towards the door, arms held fast by his sides.

Immediately regretting his outburst, the Scouser followed him out of the room and into the corridor beyond, jogging to keep up with his bunkmate's long strides.

"Where the hell are yeh goin'?"

" _Out_."

Struggling with his bust leg, Lister stopped and leant against the white corridor wall, slightly ashamed at how out of breath he was already. As a last resort, he grabbed a handful of mints from the nearby table and began flinging them at Rimmer's back, trying to do whatever it would take to get the guy to come back and not do anything stupid. If it meant making him angry enough to continue the argument, then that's what he would do.

When a mint bounced off the back of his head, Rimmer stopped and slowly turned back.

"I swear, Dave -" Another mint pinged off his cheek. "You really have no idea how much I want to slowly feed you feet-first through a wood grinder -"

"Just stop and listen a minute, will yeh?" Lister retorted, his tone calmer than it had been moments previously. "Hubble's got no respect for holograms! I don't care if she hears me! She tried to make me shoot three of 'em in that stupid test thing."

Rimmer seemed to forget his anger for a short time.

"Did you?"

"No! And don't yeh think it's a bit off she can resurrect her crew as holograms but won't use them to play exterminators? Why won't she use her own crew, eh? What even happened to 'em in the first place? She's sendin' you 'cause she thinks you're just an expendable piece of hardware. Any titles or anythin' she's promised you ain't real, Arn, I swear. Why're you so desperate to go out there?"

It took a moment to receive an answer, probably because the hologram appeared to be on the verge of exploding. Another glitch sent the man _fzzzting_ backwards several feet, and the likelihood was that his T-count (the hologrammatic equivalent of blood pressure, apparently) was through the roof, as it so often was.

"Because I have to, Lister!" Rimmer burst out, rather unhelpfully. "Why are you so desperate to keep me here, hm? Mister 'Self-Proclaimed Despiser of Arnold Rimmers Across the Multiverse'?"

"I should think the answer is bloody obvious by now!"

Oddly, it proved a relief to say it, however indirectly. Like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. It was just Kochanski all over again, wasn't it? Once he had said it, once he had _really_ said it, he had been ready to accept either acceptance or rejection, because he could be proud of the fact he'd actually had the balls to say something. One for showing his fondness for people via actions rather than words, it always proved distinctly difficult for Lister to admit his feelings to anyone.

Especially now, when half of him was clamouring for Rimmer and the other half just wanted to go back to bed and wallow in his own shame. God, of all the people in the entire Universe -

Oh, right. He was the only one left.

To his surprise, however, Rimmer didn't look entirely disgusted. It certainly seemed as if he wanted to look that way, of course, but something else was taking precedence, however reluctantly. Lister liked to imagine it was a kind of wistfulness that he was seeing, but knew it was more likely to be something closer to confusion, embarrassment, or even despair.

"I'm sorry, I really am," Lister insisted reluctantly, folding his arms across his chest and averting his gaze. "For makin' yeh feel like smeg. I just … It's just difficult, isn't it? We're both just stuck and we're gonna be stuck until we're gone. I'm miserable and so are you. I just wanted you to feel a bit better about yehself, 'cause I know what it's like feeling alone and like yeh've only got your own brain for company. I really get it, man, and you get me, too. I think that's why I've started … Y'know."

Chancing a glance upwards, he half expected to find Rimmer gone. No, he was still there, looking awfully like a deer caught in headlights. Lister dared take a step towards him, holding out his hands as if to keep the man calm.

"And – yeah. The whole Ace Rimmer thing," he continued. "That was cool. Like, super wicked-cool. I mean it! You're amazin' when you put your mind to it, y'know? You're a good bloke. Better than me. While you were off savin' the Multiverse from simulants and whatever else, I was just … Look, what I mean is that … I, uh, care about you. Maybe. I just don't want yeh getting' yehself all bashed up, aight?"

In the awkward silence that followed, one of Hubble's robots approached on a single, squeaky wheel and began sweeping up the mints that had been tossed on the floor. It meant that the computer was listening to their conversation and probably had been the entire time, because like Holly, she served as the brain and the vessel served as her body. Lister only cared to the extent that he didn't want to say anything inflammatory to her in case she indeed decided to eliminate life support systems, but other than that, he gave no stuffs in regards to her thoughts on his stance.

Rimmer looked like he was about to throw up. Lister had never received a reaction quite that bad, before. True, he probably wasn't the most hygienic person on the planet, but he was a good guy, was he?

"Think about what you're saying," the hologram said, forcing a smile that was both angry and nervous. He wagged a finger, like he was about to give the other man a mild telling off. "Really just think for a moment, would you? I know it's difficult for you to think rationally, but there's no harm in trying, is there?"

With a sigh, Lister pinched the bridge of his nose defeatedly.

"I am bein' rational. I'm bein' honest, and it's really tough. One of the hardest things I've ever done, actually, 'cause I know it's not much comin' from me, just some bum from the arse-end of Liverpool. I'm not a space hero or an astro. But it's not always about what you could be, is it, really? It's about just bein' decent, and I think I'm doin' the decent thing by tellin' the truth."

Lister wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to hear back. He didn't necessarily want to hear that Rimmer felt the same way, although that would be incredible. All he wanted, really, was to know if there was a chance Rimmer felt any degree of fondness for him at all. What he wanted was for Arnold to realise that somebody appreciated him in that way and stop heeding the orders of the nosy computer listening in on them.

Things rarely worked out as expected.

Rimmer shuffled a bit with clear discomfort, then took a reluctant step towards his bunkmate, apparently beginning to change his mind about what he was doing.

"Some people, Listy," he said firmly, briefly pressing a finger onto his own lips thoughtfully, "don't deserve the truth."

"Wha'? But -"

"And there's something I've been needing to tell you. You might be a slobbish oaf with all the good character of a goldfish, but you have your moments. A long time ago, when I left you miserable lot to your own devices, I met a Lister who took command of the _Wildfire_ in my stead. It was only for a few days, but he took his grief and turned it into something amazing. That's what you do, isn't it? You turn bad into good. So stop lounging about feeling sorry for yourself, you useless lump, and make something good out of _me_. Let me get us back home."

It was then that Lister could accept his feelings as absolute.

Moving forwards, he took hold of the front of Rimmer's smock and yanked him down until their noses were pressed together.

"You drive me mad in every bleedin' way possible," he admitted. Managing to refrain from surprising the hologram with another stonking kiss, he instead pulled him into a tight embrace and patted his back. "Who was he grievin' for?"

"His sanity, probably." A brief pause, and then Rimmer pushed Lister back a little, keeping his hands there on his shoulders. It seemed to be a clear, if slight, invitation.

There went Lister's heart again, pounding so heavily that light-headedness threatened. Probably more a result of an overindulgence of cheap curries than anything else, he preferred to romanticise it, sure that there wasn't anything that could make him feel that way except kissing somebody that he really, really liked. That, and any form of exercise.

It didn't last long, but he made the most of it, accepting the sudden invitation with poorly restrained vigour. With his hands on Rimmer's cheeks, he gingerly pressed him back against the nearest wall and gave the man the best he had to offer, probably embarrassing himself by going at him like he was starving. It didn't matter. They were both enraged, both miserable, and both likely a bit touch-starved, too, so the Scouser wasn't the only one trying too hard. It made their kiss horribly clumsy and just a bit awkward, but that didn't matter, either, because it had finally _happened_.

It was weird, though, that Rimmer had finally allowed it despite his constant insinuations that he didn't feel the same way Lister did.

At a frantic sudden escape and gesturing from the hologram, Lister pulled himself from his haze and turned around to see the Cat stood at the other end of the corridor. With a sheepish smile, he quickly tried to arrange his dreads and boilersuit back into something less indicative of what he had just been doing, but he became entirely sure that, judging from the Cat's expression of sheer horror, he had unwittingly just witnessed everything.

Somehow having acquired a pink fluffy dressing gown and a matching sleep mask, Cat quickly brought the mask back down over his eyes and cringed violently.

"Oh, god! Somebody _please_ bleach my eyes!"

"Cat, smeg off back to bed!" Lister demanded, heat prickling at his cheeks. "What the hell are yeh doin'?"

"What am I doing? What are _you_ doin'?! I spent all night explorin' and hoardin' some cool stuff, and I was gonna spend the morning asleep, so I came out to tell you monkeys to stop having an argument right outside my door! Well, I ain't walkin' in on you two when you're alone ever again! Where's the robot guy? I need him to give me a brain transplant!"

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Lister pulled a face and tried to brush the incident off by appearing as nonchalant as possible.

"Well, the only brain you could have is mine, innit? How'd yeh feel about a transplant, now?"

Cat paused for a moment, then looked equally as mortified as he had moments ago.

"Well, if you two are done suckin' each others faces off, I'm gonna catch up on my beauty sleep!" Lifting his sleep mask again, his arched eyebrows dropped in confusion. "Hey, there _was_ two of you, wasn't there?"

Lister turned to find that Rimmer had somehow escaped the premises without a sound. He was good at that.

Dread seeping into his gut, the technician slowly turned back to Cat and closed his eyes to rub them frustratedly.

"Er, can you smell him nearby?"

"No, and I don't wanna! I don't know where you two have been!"

Well, smeg. Lister didn't want to think that the hologram had chosen the stupider option and had run away to carry out Hubble VI's evil plans, but he had to accept that stupidity was commonplace among himself and his peers, and thus the worst possibility was usually the correct one. Finding himself wounded by Rimmer's sudden flight, he ignored his bruised pride and approached Cat.

"I hope you found somethin' out there we can use to catch up to him before everythin' all goes to pot, man."

Despite likely not having a clue what was going on, Cat suddenly bared his fangs in a grin and apparently forgot the horror of everything he had just walked in on.

"You know it, bud!"


End file.
